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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

"The company was fairly mum about how it planned to make those cameras and its format more widely available, but I am completely serious when I say that I would pay the NBA thousands of dollars to get a season pass to watch games captured in this way. Yes, that’s a crazy statement to make, but courtside seats cost that much or more, and that 10-second clip was shockingly close to the real thing."

The author was shown a 10-second clip and is ready to hand over thousands of dollars.

A few paragraphs later he acknowledges that it was just a 10-second clip, but there was also another clip, so a total of 20 seconds - surely enough to write an opinion piece of thousands of words.

The reality-shaping power of Apple's demo maestros is truly admirable.

I'm an XR believer too and I'm very happy that Apple is entering the market with a high-end device that's not for gaming. At the same time, we have to recognize that the history of this form factor is littered with amazing 10-second demos that failed to deliver actual user value, from recent failures like Magic Leap going all the way back to the late 1980s and Jaron Lanier's VPL Research.

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Thank you, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills or something. I have no idea how much of the footage in the long advertisements are actual in-headset recording vs highly editorialized made up aspirational CG. Additionally, I really don't think all the people here singing the praises of Apple's currently nonexistent headset (for actual customer use at least until 2024 or something) have ever used a headset. Headsets give me:

* Headaches

* Nausea

* Eye Strain

* Neck Pain

* Acne (from sitting on the same parts of your face all the time)

Etc. Also, reading text is incredibly difficult and exasperating which is this things whole value prop since it's targeting office work. Until anyone can actually try this and ensure that these are all non-issues, all the speculation is a weird cultic worship of Apple.

Just in case people forget, here's some misleading advertisements for Google Glass that didn't quite live up to the hype[0][1]. And some misleading advertisements about holo lense that didn't quite live up to the hype[2]. Full disclaimer, I have a valve index but haven't tried holo lens or Google Glass, but the fact that they're not ubiquitous today says something. It's especially funny that the holo lens looks very similar to Apple Vision, and then Apple makes these ridiculous claims about innovativing where no one else has. I swear I must be taking crazy pills or something.

[0]: https://youtu.be/4EvNxWhskf8

[1]: https://youtu.be/5R1snVxGNVs

[2]: https://youtu.be/eqFqtAJMtYE

If it’s as good as they say, then the market will show it. It’s not worth worrying about whether it will succeed or not; that’s Apple’s concern alone. We can all just enjoy the ride in the meantime.

This is why I dont understand all the doomerism. If Apple is totally bullshitting here, we're going to find out extremely quickly, which will undoubtedly harm their reputation in the space when it comes to the next generations.

If they weren't confident it works almost as magically as its described, it would not have been shown.

Skepticism is not doomerism— and in fact should be praised.

Multiple companies have tried and failed. Their marketing demos looked just as compelling.

Sure, we will find out. Eventually. In over a year when it launches.

But until then, why should we trust companies who’s best interest is not to give us the truth on what their product is but rather the best possible vision for what it will be?

So far every single iteration on VR/AR/XR has been extremely disappointing once actually used, but with extremely high fidelity marketing demos. This might certainly be different, but until it’s proven that it is, why should people believe it? “Fool me once” and all that very much applies.

>Skepticism is not doomerism— and in fact should be praised.

Assuming something is going to fail, like many are across Hacker News since the announcement dropped (perhaps not in this thread), is doomerism. There's a difference between that and expressing concern over Apple's claims.

>Their marketing demos looked just as compelling.

I could not disagree more. I could have not been less interested in Oculus nor Google Glass from their advertisements. But an AR experience (as opposed to VR) that integrates with my Mac and iPhone? It has my attention.

>why should we trust companies who’s best interest is not to give us the truth on what their product is but rather the best possible vision for what it will be

Because Apple has delivered high quality products the vast majority of the time (butterfly keyboards and App Store limitations notwithstanding). Why would we assume they're suddenly dropping the ball on this, when they're on stage calling it the future of computing?

> This might certainly be different, but until it’s proven that it is, why should people believe it?

It all comes down to the company producing it - Apple hasn't made a device like this before, and comparing Apple's products to Meta's and Google's is a terrible metric to go by. It's like eating gas station sushi, getting sick, then going to an upscale sushi bar, and saying "Ohhh I've had terrible experience with Sushi in the past"

Even if you aren't willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a company that consistently produces high quality products and building a brand new product line, express that very healthy skepticism by trying it out at an Apple Store before purchasing - at that price tag, I sure am.

When you say something IS going to fail, then it is doomerism which isn't hard to find. Also expressing skepticism on some forum is nothing praiseworthy, only reviews matter or just trying it yourself at the Apple store once available.

> When you say something IS going to fail

Who, exactly in this comment thread your comment is part of, said that? Press parent up to the top, at most it's skepticism based on past experience.

One of these... Yes let me scroll down and copy and paste a comment just for you. If you are actually interested, you put in the effort yourself, otherwise we both move on.

I did already. I even said that they are at most skepticism.

I asked you to do it for your own benefit, because it doesn't exist and you clearly don't know that.

My assumption is that Apple’s big innovation on a familiar looking form factor is addressing the issues you describe.

Apple generally succeeds with mass market friendly ergonomics. I understand skepticism about unreleased technology, but I personally wouldn’t make the assumption Apple has botched the ergonomics on this release. It seems like exactly the kind of thing they would have focused on reaching a high level of quality with.

This TechCrunch review where the reviewer had access to them says that the issues with headaches/nausea don’t happen: https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/05/first-impressions-yes-appl...

Most of the nausea issues in VR stem from the disconnect between moving in virtual space without moving in the real world, and Apple seems to be focusing on applications which maintain a 1:1 mapping between real and virtual movement. Games are where that's most likely to be an issue and they're very much not focusing on actual VR gaming, only playing non-VR games in VR on a virtual screen.

The poor UX of moving the user camera in the virtual scene is trivially avoided.

If any of the immersive apps drop framerate, you'll feel it. Its not just a games concern.

I’d like to see how they stand up for longer than a 30 minute demo. For me, the headache doesn’t kick in until about 90 minutes in.

Tech history is full with product ideas that failed to take off for decades until they crossed the threshold of being actually nice to use

In 2005 people would have predicted a flop for smartphones given the many failures of the like of Apple Newton

I think it’s actually more reflective of the fact apple tends to be pretty thorough in product development and anything launched usually covers an awful lot of the problem domain. However their 1.0 launch of any product is usually an 80% complete product, for apple. For most other device makers it’s a 220% complete device at 1.0. So, I expect the first version will be a directional indicator that address more than twice the gap of other products but is itself not “done” by their aspirational standard. They then iterate in their respective cadences by product towards some converged state that reflects a “done,” then hit an iterative improvement cycle. It seems to be in the range of 4-5 generations.

Because this pattern is has been done again and again it’s fairly obvious. The first is the high bar for releasing at all and the willingness to let it die before launching something less than 220% better than industry standard despite tons of investment (apple car?). The second is the progressive improvement over the first several iterations that advances the product in the remaining gaps as their technology improves.

To me, this feels fairly objective and rational and not particularly cultish. It’s the benefit of an earned reputation and a clear and adhered to product development strategy.

Amen. Love, hate, or don’t care (me), Apple does have an earned reputation for not delivering flops to market. While I have about as much (personal) interest in Vision as I have in anything Apple-stamped past the release of the iPhone 6, it’s certainly not crazy-pilled to think they will deliver a quality product on day one, with the caveat that there will probably be some iteration before we get to Vision 2.0 where the limitations get smoothed out.

And also to chime in on the most common argument for the "VR/AR for work" - the meetings. I actually DON'T need to see anyone's faces or avatars on the online meeting. I don't WANT to see them and I'm honestly tired of Zoom trying to shove me in my face their speaker thumbnails and constantly switching to full screen. I don't need that at all FOR WORK. For work I eithr want to see screen being shared pixel perfectly (so no floating pseudo screens in VR) or don't see zoom/meet interface at all, keep it in background and just listen, while doing work at the foreground.

VR people advertising to me a "real life like meetings along with a meeting room, whiteboard and full body avatars" are either clueless or delusional, because that stuff has actually a negative value FOR WORK. Sure, when you have something like an online party (yay... fun...) then seeing other can be entertaining. But not for actual work.

You might not be taking crazy pills - but your list of complaints is a very individual one. Headsets may give you personally headaches, nausea, eye strain, neck pain, and acne. But they don't for me, and they don't for any of my friends, or many of my colleagues. And I get motion sickness trying to play many video games.

The only thing stopping me from working for extended periods inside one of the headsets I currently own is the fact that the resolution they run at is too low for me to put enough text on the screen. I can absolutely believe that a headset with a higher resolution would make that use case viable for me.

It seems more likely to me that the reviewers who are hopeful about the product after their 30 minutes of use of the headset (some of whom are indeed very experienced users of AR/VR hardware) simply don't struggle with the individual issues that you have.

To add to your list, I was at a friends and used their headset for about ten minutes of gaming and the parts of my head that touched the headset were drenched in sweat, but that just may be a peculiarity of my physiology.

Assuming Apple’s product has all the deficiencies of failed products from the past will of course lead you to conclude that they will fail.

We also shouldn't assume that Apple will magically fix all of these issues either. These are well known problems with VR, and Apple has yet to prove they've solved them. And until these problems are solved, VR will struggle to move beyond a novelty.

If these are well known problems with VR, should should assume Apple is fully aware of them. Imagining otherwise would be stupid.

If they are aware of the problems then we should assume they believe they have adequate solutions. Imagining otherwise would be stupid.

Magic is not needed. All it takes is a team that is aware of the problems, and has the engineering resources to address them.

> Acne (from sitting on the same parts of your face all the time)

This might actually end up being the hardest bit to solve. VR has to create a dark room for your face, so removing facial contact is practically impossible.

There are very few things that normies will accept, if the compromise is more acne.

But others can't see the acne as long as you wear the headset.

> Eye Strain

iStrain. You're welcome.

> The reality-shaping power of Apple's demo maestros is truly admirable.

It really isn't just the demos that wow us, and it isn't just the high-end device. The device is packed with tech, for sure. But 80% of the story here is Apple's strong design choices:

"Here's how you will interact with the world. Here's how other people fit in. This is how UI is going to display. We rewrote our entire UI stack on top of a physically based renderer so developers can comfortably recompile their millions of existing apps. Here's how we process-isolated the gaze tracking so no third-party app will be able to data-mine it for personalised Ads"

They didn't just build a headset and call it a day. They didn't show useless, aspirational demos (though during the keynote, Disney certainly showed a whole lot of rubbish). They developed the UI paradigms, human interface guidelines, put huge thought towards accessibility. Those of us impressed with this are not wowed by just hardware, we're amazed by the amount and strength of design thought put into every aspect of your interaction with this computer. There's so much _opinion_ about what this computer should be, and how we should use it, that's the exciting thing

Their opinions may not pan out in the future. But I'm so glad _someone_ is having strong opinions about human computer interaction in the AR/VR space, because Meta and the rest certainly don't

Pretty sure if I have my headset on and I'm in the middle of the room with my kids, I'm not a "hip father" doing cool shit with my kids. Consider if this was someone on a phone in the kitchen discussing something. We wouldn't think, "how progressive this person is to have work conversations while mostly ignoring his kids."

Granted, as a parent, the scene of the airline person upset that there is a kid on the flight is... off putting. To the extreme. Especially when the response is "ugh, thank goodness I can turn off all visual senses around me." SMH

And I am struggling to see any UI design/consideration that was new in this clip. Do you have a rundown on exactly what was amazing?

Oh I totally agree. The scenes with parents/kids were so off, and felt emotionally jarring

> And I am struggling to see any UI design/consideration that was new in this clip. Do you have a rundown on exactly what was amazing?

The State of the Union video has more detail. All of SwiftUI and UIKit now sits on top of their material-based renderer. You can now render a Metal Shader on a SwiftUI view in one line of code. They have consistent and detailed paradigms for how menus, toolbars, productivity apps etc should work on this platform (likely from porting all of their own). 3D models fit seamlessly into the UI view hierarchy. They have detailed design and interaction constraints for all new types of spatial windows, as well as legacy apps. All of this even goes back to their Objective-C APIs, which are updated appropriately

Then they've implemented things like process isolation for eye-gaze tracking. Simply so apps can't read your gaze and abuse that data. No one else makes decisions like this in a v1 product. It probably required a whole team of people to get right, considering that gaze is the primary interaction method a user will be using with your app

It's hard to explain just how much depth of thought has been put into this platform. They have addressed a lot of hard questions with some very good design, and above all, they are opinionated about their platform. In every corner and detail there is a strong design choice about the right way to design and implement that interaction. That opinionated design is why people get so excited, and it can be so jarring when they get it wrong

The "material-based renderer" sounds... fluff? Most any system should have it so that rendering a menu is a single line of code. Same for toolbars and other. Those are typically simple registrations of ("name" "description" handler). Anything more that that, and you are doing tailored menu/toolbar and are straying on purpose.

That leads, then, to the spatial windows and APIs that go with them. And... quite frankly, I have zero faith that anybody can pull off a V1 for that API. Expect churn and capability growth.

For the process isolation on eye-gaze tracking... assuming you can get "hover" events for things you are gazing at, than I fail to see how they can keep you from reading the gaze. I expect they will try and lock down abuses of that, but as soon as you enable coding against what a user is looking at, developers will find a way to leak that.

And if they expect that the primary way I will interact with an application is by looking at it.... that feels very very sad, all told. I don't want to just look at things, I want to manipulate them. And for that, I am almost certainly going to want some haptic/tactile interaction. Such that this won't live on its own.

Happy to be proven wrong, of course. And, for what it is, this does look impressive. I just don't buy the marketing spin on it, at the moment. Way way way too "dreams work, bro!"

The gaze tracking is process isolated. Only when you tap is that location ever communicated to the application process — so they had to build a UI API that supports configurable hover behaviour where that hover behaviour is never readable by developers

They've thought through the accessibility features, how VoiceOver works with the headset, dynamic type sizes, etc.

Designing this sort of consistent API across a whole platform, where it's not only easy to use, but really delightful, is the bit that's exciting to a lot of people

I have collected a bunch of A/VR headsets and developed for them. None of them think deeply about these things, so they just haven't been that interesting. They are more "we supply the hardware, you supply the opinion about how it should be used." I really want the other side of that story

The Disney part of the keynote was all "dreams work." It was complete nonsense with no clear direction. Apple's stuff, while it might be wrong, is at least opinionated and clear

There is a lot of marketing sheen, but there's a clear design opinion about human computer interaction that comes through. That's the exciting bit that I think people react to, sometimes without realising

I didn't actually watch the Disney part. I saw the dad "working" in what seemed like a kitchen? Can't remember. The shallow interaction with the kids, though, gave me cringes.

Then there is the juxtaposition of, "this let's you present as if there" with the, "of course you have to fly places to be with people, so when you do, zone out like a champ"

Of course, zoning out better not need you to interact much, as hearing on a plane is tough, and pinching your neighbor is not smiled upon.

I will mostly have to take your word for it that hover actions are not observable by the application. Will make games... More amusing than usual, with no memory of being looked at for characters.

And not showing any extra peripherals is a big part of "dreams work." Physical feedback is huge, and a big part of why controllers are needed. Even just the vibration of the standard PS5 controllers go a long way. For driving games, a haptic wheel is more immersive than the vr.

> I will mostly have to take your word for it that hover actions are not observable by the application. Will make games... More amusing than usual, with no memory of being looked at for characters.

It's described in the Keynote. This is the exact quote:

"For example, where you look is very personal. It can give away something about what you're thinking. In Apple Vision Pro, where you look stays private. Eye input is isolated to a separate background process, so apps and websites can't see where you are looking. Only when you tap your fingers do results get communicated, just like a mouse click or tap on other Apple devices."

I can't speak to whether extra controllers are a good idea for Apple. From the impressions I have watched and read from VR enthusiasts (e.g, Norm from Tested) they have very high praise for the input and UI. I agree with you, however. I don't think typical VR games will be big on this device

It’s obvious how a 10 second clip scales to 10 minutes or 10 hours or 10 days. You don’t need that much imagination or even a leap of faith.

A court side seat to an NBA game is north of $1000. If this creates 20% of the experience it will easily pay for itself in 1 season.

> It’s obvious how a 10 second clip scales to 10 minutes or 10 hours or 10 days.

A 10 second clip that will have been tuned to perfection by the very best editors for the demo is one thing. A live, un/rough-edited capture of a game broadcast in real time is quite different.

I've seen some truly amazing sports coverage to show off my OLED TV when I bought it. I still have the USB drive the TV came with and it does indeed look gorgeous. You know what doesn't look quite so good? Live broadcasts of those same sports. They are pixelated with some macroblocking and judder and posterization as the cameras quickly pan around the field and cut randomly.

It still looks pretty good but no way near as good as the minute long demo video LG used to show off how good their TV can look.

Obviously I've not used a Vision Pro so my comment isn't about the Vision Pro specifically, just that it is quite easy to make things look very good in a highly tuned demo for something vs real world broadcast quality.

Is "an unrestricted view of the game from close up" the only appeal to court-side seats? I think it's perhaps the least interesting aspect, since you can achieve this for free at almost any non-NBA level basketball game.

Or perhaps the appeal of court-side seats is the atmosphere, experience and social signaling, none of which are provided by these glasses.

Our desire for "cheap" court-side seats is understandable from an evolutionary sense. But it's almost like these glasses (and VR in general) are designed to provide the "feeling" of evolutionary benefit while carefully and completely removing any actual benefit.

> Or perhaps the appeal of court-side seats is the atmosphere, experience and social signaling, none of which are provided by these glasses.

The author's entire point was that the demo did recreate the atmosphere and experience he had while courtside at an NBA game. Maybe it doesn't provide the social clout, but that's not the point for tons who wish they could sit courtside.

> Maybe it doesn't provide the social clout, that's not the point for tons who wish they could sit courtside

There is no maybe about it. Tell me another reason why people would want court side, that wouldn’t also apply to a high school game (where people could sit court side for free but absolutely don’t)

Your value calculations are off.

* You can't do the math from a baseline of "not watching the game at all". If this creates 20% of the experience but a $1000 TV creates a different 20% of the experience (watching with other people next to you, for example), you haven't gained any value over the cheaper device.

* Unless you're regularly buying NBA tickets, this isn't going to "pay for itself". Solar panels can (in theory) pay for themselves because they cut back on a bill you'd have either way. A product like this can only pay for itself if it causes you to spend less money on NBA tickets than you otherwise would have.

Make no sense to sit courtside, the spectator should be able to be wherever they wanted, either in the air, on the nosebleeds, on the court itself, or under the court.

Having a courtside seat is a physical constraint that does not need to be respected in VR.

Surely the physical constraint still exists as they need to set up the equipment to capture the video feed.

Indeed, but even in this case, the spectator could still be at any location outside of the 3D area being filmed (in this case, the game itself) for complete experience, or inside for a incomplete (potential blindspots) presentation.

That's the pragmatic approach, not the marketing one.

>It’s obvious how a 10 second clip scales to 10 minutes or 10 hours or 10 days.

Have you ever watched the announcement of a new videogame console? Or even new videogames?

10 seconds of marketing don't extrapolate well to 10 days of actual usage.

Why would NBA allow for this as they would lose an extreme amount of money if people can get the same experience at home?

That would be economic suicide for them. They need to keep the seats being a special experience.

I think you could make the same claim about TV broadcasts, but pro sports seems to be doing just fine, some claim that live sports is what is keeping cable alive these days.

Live sports and being at the event is always going to be a special thing that people want to pay for- you can't heckle the opposing team through a headset. If people want to pay even more to get a coach-eye view of the game, I can't imagine ticket sales would be impacted one iota. As it is, watching a game on TV is a better viewing experience than being their live for most sports. American Football, for example- the field is large, your seat is static so it can't follow the action. Its often played in cold, rainy conditions- I go to a game or two a year just for the excitement of it all, but come a dreary rainy late November day, I am happy to sit on the couch and enjoy the surround sound. All major US sports make most of their money off TV broadcast rights. This will be no different.

I'm more a pro hockey fan (go Canes!) and have paid thousands of dollars a year in tickets. I would still go to several games because that is an experience in itself (tailgating, etc). But I would much more gladly pay for a VisionPro than a Bally Sports subscription to watch the rest of the games at home. If they can get the local announcers to do the play-by-play on the VisionPro, I'd be throwing them my money just for this feature alone.

It may look and sound the same, but no one is accidentally spilling beer in merriment or telling their friends they were there.

It builds the brand. Watching the game on tv is already a far superior way to actually see what’s happening. No different from any other live event, it’s a social experience.

> Watching the game on tv is already a far superior way to actually see what’s happening.

Yes and no.

Knowing the entire state of the game? Sure, TV's pretty good.

But watching on TV doesn't give the strong impression of the sheer physicality of the game that sitting a row or two away from the court does. I used to sit baseline for Warriors games and it sure left an impression.

> Watching the game on tv is already a far superior way to actually see what’s happening.

I agree with you for football, but the first 5 rows at an NBA game are amazing. And it's very easy to see what's going on.

They can sell two orders more the number of court side seats for virtual season tickets

The people who are paying for those seats will still pay for those seats. The people paying for the headset experience would’ve never paid for the seats. Different audience.

In the UK football broadcasting is regulated. The traditional top-flight league games kick off at 3pm on Saturday. None of those matches are allowed to be broadcast to maintain gate revenues for the clubs. Very roughly speaking only 3 matches on Sunday and one or two on weekday evenings are broadcast. Cup matches etc are allowed to be broadcast too.

All these rules only govern what they can broadcast to UK citizens though. If you have a globally popular sport/product like the Premier League you can broadcast the Saturday 3pm matches to them, as they're unlikely to be able to attend a match anyway.

All that aside I actually think cycling could be a wonderful sport to view in this format. Great screnery shots from helicopters and close up peleton shots captured on motorbikes. Also strap into your turbo trainer to ride along for an hour too!

Unfortunately any case where the camera moves is not going to work, for a very large portion of the population (I don't know the percentages of people who get motion sickness in VR but they get that even from their own slow motion, imagine motion from a bouncing camera on a motorcycle)

Really? We're talking about a transformation from a fixed and time-bound asset, the live experience of being physically present, into an entirely digital experience which can be replayed.

Doesn't this change the potential customer pool from people within traveling distance at the right time with enough money, into a global market?

Consider this: Sell the live courtside seat for the same 1000+; Open up sales for the virtual experience for 20% and sell it to anyone you like -- and, the next day, put the same no-longer-live experience available to pass-holders at $x/season and on-demand for $50 --

Haven't you just transformed your $1000 seat into some hugely increased figure?

20% is $200 for a "movie ticket".

Is the "virtual experience" $200 better than watching the game on 2D screen?

I wouldn't know, but doesn't the point still hold if I can sell (let's say) 1000 tickets at movie ticket prices, which I wouldn't otherwise have been able to sell? Call it $15 * 1000 people ... ?

I think the made up hypothetical figures distracted from the main idea, I was questioning the position that NBA would lose value when it seems like technology like this would open up a new audience of consumers who might now be willing to spend some money that they wouldn't otherwise have spent.

There's a limited number of seats in any stadium and the demand today is far bigger than the offer. Besides being very hard to find tickets, a lot of fans with money live far away from the cities where the game is being played, and some of them (lots of them, actually) live in other countries.

People don't go to the game solely to watch the game. They go because of the atmosphere, the status of being able to afford the tickets, and the excitement. The VR experience even if a lot more immersive than watching on TV, would never be the same, people would still buy seats as they always did.

The worst will be blackouts for NBA games for this.

I had NBA TV for one season, but because I live in the Portland area, I can not watch Portland trailblazers games. It was ridiculous, so I did not subscribe this year.

Like others have said, I would never pay thousands of dollars to sit court side unless I'm a multi-millionaire.

However, I would certainly pay $10 to watch the NBA Finals courtside in Vision Pro.

You're certain you would wear a headset for 10 days based on a 10-second experience? That doesn't make any sense.

I wear glasses daily. When I go on scuba or ski trips I wear heavy eyewear in tough conditions for multiple hours on end over several days. The form factor is not the problem, and it’s never been. It’s always been about the quality of the experience.

I'm on the fence about XR and I for sure won't buy a "Pro" grade device. But regarding your point about reality shaping: Sometimes it's just obvious. When I saw the presentation for the iPhone, I know this was the first phone I really really wanted - everything about it was compelling. I guess this what some XR enthusiasts feel about this device.

MKBHD mentioned the same use case in his video and how he would pay good money to NBA for it. And he used the headset for a good 30 minutes. Maybe it's a valid use case? Have you personally tried the headset to flat out dismiss it?

I'm not dismissing it. I'm actually considering shelling out the money for this Apple headset. I've just become wary of exuberant initial reports based on 10-second exposures to completely scripted demo apps.

These journalists who get this launch-day experience were selected for their history of writing nice things about Apple. They're being shown the device in ideal conditions under the watchful eye of Apple's world-leading PR team, and they've been primed for years to expect something amazing from the Next Big Apple Product. There isn't a tremendous amount of objectivity in these circumstances.

I have been exceptionally critical of Apple, particularly in terms of ATT.

Apple benefits greatly from the fact that "journalists" are some of their most devoted fans. That gets them free coverage that's wildly disproportionate in both volume and positivity. Not to say they don't make good products - I have to admit that they do - but they escape a lot of harsh scrutiny that other companies have to deal with. Terminally online techies are another core demographic, resulting in a similar skew on social media sites like ... <looks around> ... um, Reddit.

> demos that failed to deliver actual user value

Does Apple have a a history of doing this?

I think that's why people are excited.

Newton, Power Mac Cube, iMac G4 "Sunflower", and solid gold first-gen Apple Watch come to mind as Apple hardware products that failed to live up to the hype.

On the software side there are more misses, but also the stakes are lower.

It's a great track record for thirty years, of course. All the other big tech companies have graveyards full of half-assed product launches.

Except for the Apple Watch I had all these products. They were some of the best of their time and even hold up today in terms of design and usability.

Your definition of success seems extraordinarily high, if these products were failures. Maybe measured by items sold. But then each of them stands in nearly every single design museum like MoMA, history books, and were clear stepping stones to the Mac mini (cube, sunflower without display), and ipod/phone (newton). So bottom line they were a clear success to Apple’s enormous brand value.

The NeXT Cube was considered a failure.

... except ... when I write iOS software (for the most successful product of all time), I am frequently using types that have "NS" prefixes.

I wonder where they came from?

IIRC Jobs purchased NeXT when he took the Apple CEO job, to get a new OS base. As NeXT was his company, I'm pretty sure it was a decision based on bias and urgency and not because NextStep was the best there was. But yeah it's an interesting legacy for sure :)

> IIRC Jobs purchased NeXT when he took the Apple CEO job

No, Apple bought NeXT after the failure of Copland to birth a replacement for the creaky and leaky MacOS (BeOS was the big alternative, but Apple thought they were asking for too much).

And NeXT proceeded to take over: Apple bought NeXT in February 1997 keeping Jobs back as an advisor, Jobs staged a boardroom coup to remove Amelio in July, and was then named interim CEO.

Following that he started cutting into the existing product lines and placing NeXT people (Tevanian , Forstall), promoting people he was interested in (Ive), or hiring them from outside (Cook). Basically reshaping the company.

You recall that incorrectly :) The NeXT purchase came first, Jobs as CEO came after that. But yeah, it was a bit of a reverse takeover in a way.

More specifically, Steve Jobs founded NeXT after Apple pushed him out in the late 80s.

A decade or so later, Apple was on the tail end of a long, slow, downward slide. The team wasn't happy with the current state of their Mac operating system, and bought out NeXT to use their software as the basis of its replacement (Mac OS X).

Jobs, as CEO of NeXT, came back to Apple as a consultant, but was CEO again in a matter of years.

NextStep was easily the best there was. Nothing else was remotely suitable. The only contender people like to fantasize about is BeOS, which was nice (I used it as a daily driver for a year), but a toy compared to NextStep and OSX.

Yes, sales failures is what I'm talking about.

It's already clear the Vision Pro is a milestone for VR and Apple. I'm not sure if that can translate to market success for several years at least.

Other than the watch, all the products you mentioned are before 2002. Anything in the past 20 years that have been huge misses in delivering up to expectation?

Also how is the 1st gen watch a failure? It sold millions immediately, and was a huge commercial success. It pretty much started a gold rush for digital watches again.

I think it's fair to say the new "Apple" (last 15 years or so), has been pretty good with exceeding expectations and breaking through barriers that other companies just couldn't.

In what sense did the iMac G4 fail to live up to the hype? That was my first Mac, I still have it. Thought it was an incredible computer for the time--the iMac + OS X 10.1 Puma was absolutely magical coming from Windows 98 on a beige Dell.

The design still looks incredible too, 20+ years later.

I will grant that the Newton failed. In the Apple hardware category, I'd also add the iPod Hi-Fi, the butterfly keyboard, and the touch bar.

That said, Apple's failures are rare and their multi-decade track record of delivering on hype is unsurpassed.

The sales of iMac G4 failed so badly that there was a three-month period in 2004 when it was simply unavailable. It was discontinued without a successor on store shelves.

It was too expensive to manufacture and Apple wasn't sure they could sell it, so they just didn't make any. Hard to believe that could happen to a Mac model today.

> iMac G4 "Sunflower"

What was a failure about that? It looked good and worked well.

> solid gold first-gen Apple Watch

In what way did the gold watch fail? It was the first gen watch, the same hardware as the rest, just made of gold for rich people. It didn’t fail any more than any other color did.

Both failed badly to live up to Apple's sales expectations.

The Sunflower iMac was discontinued even before its successor shipped.

The Apple Watch Edition was supposed to grow Apple into a luxury brand and expand its margins massively (you can find many interviews with Jony Ive from 2015 where he explains this thinking). This strategy was a dud.

Have you looked at the revenue from their wearables category? If the Watch is a failure then the Mac is an abject failure.

You need to seriously read what you’re actually replying to instead of what you think you are because you keep bringing up that the AW is not a failure when nobody said it was.

> Newton, Power Mac Cube, iMac G4 "Sunflower", and solid gold first-gen Apple Watch come to mind as Apple hardware products that failed to live up to the hype.

No one seriously thought that the Apple Watch was going to be an iPhone size hit. It’s a complete straw man argument.

Do you understand what "solid gold first-gen Apple Watch" means? Or, in the other comment, "Apple Watch Edition"?

It does not mean what you clearly think it means.

It was a pet project for Ives. Do you really think that Apple didn’t know their target market well enough to think that they wouldn’t be selling millions of $10K watches?

That would be a perfectly acceptable comment... 3 comments ago.

Instead, you pretended as if they said AW as an entire category was a failure.

Next time, reply to what is written in the comment, not what is easier to argue against.

It’s a perfectly acceptable comment now. No one in their right mind thought there Apple had realistic expectations of selling 10 of millions of slow 1st generation $10K watches. It was a straw man argument that I really didn’t think that people took seriously

> No one in their right mind thought there Apple had realistic expectations of selling 10 of millions of slow 1st generation $10K watches

This is not and has never been the bar for "failure". Stop pretending it is just because it makes your argument easier.

The comment you replied to states:

> The Apple Watch Edition was supposed to grow Apple into a luxury brand and expand its margins massively (you can find many interviews with Jony Ive from 2015 where he explains this thinking). This strategy was a dud.

Show how this specific thing is untrue, not your own definition of failure. Was that not Apple's play with the AWE? Was it not a failure, almost immediately discontinued? What exact part of that statement is false?

This is the real strawman and your projection is plainly obvious.

There was no world where a few $10K Apple Watch was going to “expand Apple’s margins” meaningfully compared to the number of iPhones Apple sells. Apple knew this. Anyone who knows anything about finance or simple math knows this.

Got it, so you're just making it up and moving goalposts along the way.

At least you make it plainly obvious.

The AWE strategy failed, yet now the AW (like the iPad) define the category they are in. AV could be similar. Apple doesn't know which use case will take off, but it has to get it out there to find out. Leading with the best hardware they have right now lets developers go wild.

The Apple Watch is not a failure by any objective measure. It’s very profitable and by far the biggest in the industry. Everything else you name was pre-iPhone.

They didn’t say the AW was a failure and your obvious cherry-picking of the comment is showing.

More recently, the TouchBar and 3D Touch are both pretty massive market failures for Apple despite being engineered to perfection.

I think the killer was that in the Platforms State of the Union, they didn't show anybody wearing the thing, even while saying "and I can send it to the device and look at it there". Almost like they were embarrassed by it, or something...

The Quest has live VR NBA games, and it's not selling a ton of $500 headsets for that use case, so I somehow doubt that it's going to move a lot of $3500 headsets.

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/nba-games-in-vr-on-quest/

> Five games will feature celebrity broadcasters and be shown in 180-degree immersive VR, and WNBA games, NBA G League games and NBA 2K League games will be available to watch as well.

There's a big difference between just five games and all the games in a season.

I could totally see it moving $3500 headsets if it were actually all games. Also 180° is good enough for a lot of things but for this you'd want 360°.

Eh, obviously all else being the same 360 would be better - but it’s a lot easier to make 3D camera rigs and streams that at 180 degrees.

People also probably don’t realize just how much bandwidth this takes. You need enough to stream to both 4K eyes along with enough buffer space wherever the head can turn so that there isn’t a delay when you move your head. A good portion of the world doesn’t have fast enough internet for that.

180 degree VR. This is not the same thing.

How much do you look behind you at an NBA game? 180 degrees is fully immersive in my experience.

The fact that "the author" is Ben Thompson is worth something.

The author was shown far more than a 10 second clip. He along with John Gruber got to do a full hands on demo. They talk more about it in their (paid) Dithering podcast.

> The reality-shaping power of Apple's demo maestros is truly admirable

I like the Marques Brownlee takes, he's one of the "30 minutes hands on" guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvXuyITwBI

He seems fairly well impressed, at least in the first half of the video ...

<< The reality-shaping power of Apple's demo maestros is truly admirable.

One of the things we have dissected in our MBA class was Apple's Iphone reveal and how carefully choreographed[1] it was ( I am being very generous given my anti-Apple bias ). You could argue that Apple was simply lying since the product was not ready, but looking back, they were able to deliver on the promise of that reveal.

Oddly, it makes me somewhat hopeful that this product will work as well. I am not ready to shell out that cash on it just yet, but I will be looking at SDK as soon as they actually release it. Heavens protect me; I want to play with that toy.

[1]https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/04/former-apple-engineer-g...

Can’t such recordings already be done with a special camera and be viewed with a VR headset? Yet afaik there is no such market.

Not least because we have been doing the courtside view of sports events for what... nearly a decade now? And it's not very compelling compared to proper coverage with camera angles.

He went into more details on the Dithering podcast. He was able to have a much fuller demo than a few clips.

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