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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

AirPods are popular, sure, but I have quite literally never seen AirPods Max in the wild. People in the market for premium noise cancelling headsets are all buying Sony or Bose.

And it isn't just about price. There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper, and they still haven't found product market fit. The problem isn't that they need more polish.

With Meta winding down its reality investments Vision Pro is pretty much the last shot this entire sector has. If this device fails then we have no choice but to accept that VR/AR is at best a niche hobby, not the world-changing technology that we so desperately want it to be.

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Definitely going to be anecdotal here – around my neighborhood (brooklyn NY) I'm floored by how many Airpod Max's I see. It's by far the most common over-head wireless earphones I see.

Yes, but based on anecdata from that same sampling, you can also conclude everyone’s profession is podcast host and primary mode of transportation is by fixie bike.

Fixies haven’t been hot out here in 10 years (or more) but I get your point. However I was providing anecdata as a corrective to the parent comment, in order to suggest that such observations aren’t sufficient to build an argument on.

> There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper

Can you list some of these far cheaper products that have the same feature set?

Meta Quest Pro has much of what the Apple device offers while providing controllers for a significantly better gaming experience for $2500 cheaper. Considering the strongest consistent use case of VR thus far has been gaming, Apple has a huge miss IMO.

Vision Pro supports game controllers. It was in the demo.

> Meta Quest Pro has much of what the Apple device offers

No it doesn’t. Parent said there were ‘plenty’. Perhaps there is another on your the list that does?

Dualshock 5 is very differnt from VR controllers.

It’s standard for gaming.

If you are going to claim that Apple’s VR system needs to use meta’s style if controller in order to be successful at gaming, I think that’s short sighted.

It's standard for gaming with a regular screen. Not having VR controllers is a huge detriment for VR gaming. Yes there are some games which can work just using hands, but most existing VR titles will not work, and any titles developed for it will lack input complexity of ones which do support it.

Will they? It seems like tracking hands and objects directly provides much more information than gripping the two sides of a broken in-half Xbox controller.

Controllers also provide haptics (beat saber makes it feel like you're slicing a block with a light saber), a thumb stick, trigger and two buttons. we've got 40+ years experience with gaming with joysticks and buttons, this is hard to undo.

Apple will never own the type of old-school, enthusiast gaming that VR gaming has roots in (of course they do quite well in mobile gamin, but that’s something you do with a device you already own; you don’t buy a device for it). If the former type of gaming is the only application, they didn’t really have a shot to miss with. So, they are adding a bunch of extra functionality that isn’t directly related to gaming. Of course their device will not provide the best bang-for-the-buck in gaming.

But not all of us want to use VR for gaming. I want to use it to replace the monitors on my desk.

No device yet has been able to do it. Vision Pro is the closest so far, but we'll know in 9 months for real.

Where did you get the idea that Meta is "winding down its reality investments"?

Lol what if they had to change their name again. Maybe something about having to come to terms with their revenue and expenses... face their books... Facebook?

Airpods Max are 100% everywhere. And not in affluent areas either.

I probably see people wear them on public transit most often—and when I visited NY the subway was by far the most common place to see them.

> Airpods Max are 100% everywhere.

Yea, no. I've never seen a pair. I have little doubt someone around here has a pair. They just are not as common as some seem to believe.

I think the AirPods Max are a lot more hit and miss than the others... for myself and people I know, they were just too heavy/uncomfortable compared to eg the Sony WH XM series.

I see Airpod Maxes in the wild every day in Vietnam. They don’t even have apple stores here!

Where do you live? I see them quite a bit in Berlin.

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