Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

I think Apple is doing smart things here with their software:

- leverage existing content means they won't have an empty room problem or a big "now what?!" moment for users after the novelty wears off. Without Steam, most existing VR platforms would be completely pointless. So far VR is for games and most of those are published on Steam. That's because most VR hardware vendors suck at software and end up outsourcing that to game studios. Meta included. Despite their ambitions, their goggles are mainly devices for running games not developed by Meta.

- a focus on the living room experience with a high end movie theater experience running, again, off existing content. Genius move because people already spend lots of money on home theaters. Some people buy 10K$ plasma screens even. This market is very real. Also, involving Disney with their huge back catalog of completely unmonetized 3D movies ... so obvious.

- Extend the highly successful IOS ecosystem to the new experience. They have tens of millions of apps already. And they'll work fine in AR. Why not do that?

The strategy is about content. It's the right strategy. The first generation hardware is of course amazing too and it will bootstrap a new generation of application developers that will be using Apple SDKs and tools to target all this with new content. But to bootstrap the ecosystem they need an audience.

Here too the strategy is genius: SDKs are based on things developers already use. They just co-announced a push into gaming for Mac along with some convenient porting kits for developers. That was just a footnote buried deep into the mac related announcements. But of course this means more content coming to AR as well. All that lovely content currently available via Steam.

Top to bottom the strategy is about compelling content. I think it's going to work.

This is not the final answer to AR but the opening salvo in a decades long push to completely own this space. Step 0 is to get millions of these things in the market with enough content to get people hooked and keep them consuming content. The rest will come later. It's appropriately radical, pragmatic, and conservative at the same time.

It is very unfortunate the way that we see repeated claims here either implying or directly stating there is something revolutionary, besides the power (and matching price) without any acknowledgement of the existing space.

a focus on the living room experience with a high end movie theater experience running, again, off existing content. Genius move

Cool. Tell NReal and BigScreen that, they and others have already done it on Quest and other platforms. Nothing new here.

Without Steam, most existing VR platforms would be completely pointless. So far VR is for games and most of those are published on Steam.

Tell that to the many Quest users who have delighted in the wireless experience and superb exercise apps and other new vistas opened up to them in their existing platform, including remote working via services like Immersed. The latter can absolutely be boosted with the new specs the Vision Pro is bringing.

Look, this is a bold move by Apple, and I applaud it; I think it could give a welcome boost to the industry but please can we stop with the nonsense about them creating something that wasn't already there, or at least elaborate what it brings and improves with reference to the prior art.

That information - which I don't doubt is there, this is an exciting product - will be genuinely useful.

It's the same song every time Apple releases a new product. Yes, bits and pieces have been present in a variety of already existing products, but there is simply no one single existing product you could compare this one to. And history has simply shown that Apple usually gets a lot of things right and is a main driver in mass adoption. I don't know if that's gonna be the case here, since it's still "a lot" to put on something intrusive like that on your face for most people, but it's just not right to compare it directly to a Quest or something.

Similarly, sure, maybe NReal and BigScreen have done something similar and were earlier in doing so. But they simply don't have the same audience Apple does. I get the frustration -- we shouldn't credit Apple as the sole inventor of all good things. But they are usually really good in stitching a lot of good things together and releasing them in a single product that usually turns out fairly successful.

If the strategy is fully about content (which would make this device about selling services on top of the Vision Pro), why is the Vision Pro specced as it is, and why is the price point so high?

The specification of the device seems to be complete overkill for the kind of strategy you are describing, which frankly does not need extreme hardware power, and makes it cost prohibitive to many of the people who would otherwise buy the content.

All I can think of is that there are lower specced and lower priced devices coming, but I am sort of at a loss as to why they didn’t start with those - as if this fails, they aren’t going to get off the ground.

Yeah, this is the Vision Pro. That leaves room in Apple’s usual nomenclature for Vision Air, Vision Max, Vision Mini, Vision SE, and just plain Vision.

The high-end system spec is to ensure there’s no tethering requirement, thus the computer-class SoC in there.

Will help keep people from turning into Stephenson’s gargoyles. :)

It's specced the way it is to deliver the best in class, best possible content experience without compromises in initially small volumes. Neither of those things is an accident. Scaling up manufacturing is hard and expensive. Much easier to create a lot of hype for an expensive device that is going to be so popular that they won't be able to satisfy demand. So, they'll make lots of them and sell out in no time. The ebay value of these things is going to be insane.

By the way, this is a similar price point to the magic leap and holo lens devices. This just seems to be what it takes for a state of the art AR/MR experience.

And it's not like there is a shortage of very wealthy people buying things like Teslas, ipad pros, fully specced out iphones, that carry thousands of dollars worth of equipment. For those people 3500$ is just the right level of premium and exclusivity. Like it or not, Apple is very good at separating people like that from their cash. There are millions of them and most of them are already loyal customers. There is no need for a lower price point and there absolutely is no need to compromise on quality.

The goal isn't to make you happy but to make you crave something you can't afford yet. So, when the time comes you'll be spending a bit more than is comfortable for you. That's what Apple does. They leave the low margin scraps to others.

It’s a fair point but 1/ Apple for the most part didn’t start it’s product journey for any of the other products you’ve mentioned with the ‘Pro’ version - its strategy has generally been to get people to fall in love with the regular version and convince them they want more of it, doubly true when they’re introducing a new category product and 2/ It’s strange because I own many of those fully specced out things you mention, and this leaves me utterly cold. Fwiw, I also own a Kindle.

I see a lot of the pricey functionality they packed into this thing as about making it less onerous to put on. People need to actually decide to put it on to do stuff that they could do with their existing devices.

There's one unavoidable obstacle to people wanting to put on the headset: you're going to look really weird and isolated to other people in your environment. The tech to solve this problem doesn't exist, and maybe it's too high a barrier and this product category just isn't going to work. But Apple is betting that if they chip away at all the other reasons to not put on the headset, it'll cross the threshold where it wearing it becomes a regular routine for most people who buy one.

If they can bootstrap that into an ecosystem so that there's things you'll want to do with the device that you couldn't do with your other devices, at that point they can start selling a cheaper device that doesn't try to solve the onerousness problem through sheer luxury.

Maybe this is the minimum spec device that allows users to read text without getting nauseous?

Leveraging existing content from the iOS/macOS app store is going to be key I think. The "now what" is a common issue with the Quest. It's a fun little toy but once you realise they're charging AAA prices for what are essentially tech demos in many cases it becomes a bit of a hard sell.

That combined with Meta boasting "over 500 titles" like it's a good thing really do put into perspective just how devoid of content the quest really is.

>a focus on the living room experience with a high end movie theater experience

One of my biggest impressions watching Apple's trailer was that this paints a big target on televisions and home theater hardware in general.

If the experience is executed well, it would be much cheaper (yes, really) and easier and simpler to just get Apple's VR goggle instead of a TV and peripherals that will infuriate you.

Clearly we live in interesting times.

I rarely watch tv all by myself. I couldn’t imagine but two, three or four of these devices and then sit on the couch with three other ppl in isolation.

If it is about content, why would everything still have to be "apps" in their walled garden? If they want content, allow people to freely use it to their liking and produce and innovate new things.

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