Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

We can make devices that are fixed in space, where you need to orient your sensory inputs around the device. Or, we can make devices that instead are themselves oriented around your sensory inputs. The latter tends to be better for ergonomics and convenience (at least), since the device is accommodating your senses instead of your senses accommodating the device.

In other words, AR/VR/etc devices are headphones for the eyes. I can see why it seems like an obvious next step to some (if they can get it right).

But for consumers? I mostly agree. It has a few nice gimmick features, but seems rather isolating and disrupting natural human interaction.

I think there aren't enough people who will want to wear it for games or social media. Not because it's a bad experience, but because it's an expensive and cumbersome experience and it's just not THAT much better than just staring at a small screen. The user base can't motivate spending billions on creating the experiences that would grow the user base significantly.

What I think could be the breakthrough thing is the combination of AI and VR. Interactive agents and possibly also something to cheaply create that holodeck experience for rendering (NeRFs with foveal rendering, whatever - I'm an amateur skimmer of papers and extrapolating research is difficult even for experts). But imagine the difference in development costs between a VR experience where some interior space is modeled by hand in minute detail in Unreal engine, and NPCs are scripted, versus one where a space is merely captured in RFs and the NPCs are GPT bots with some plot instructions. Both of those technologies (NeRFs and GPT NPCs) would have sounded like science fiction even to the creators of the Quest2, yet here we are. I would have said "no one would ever buy/wear this" 5 years ago, but with the idea of a mind blowing photorealistic interactive murder mystery developed on a shoestring budget (Not to mention: porn - never underestimate it) I'm not so sure any more.

I have no doubt this new medium will revolutionize mainstream TV and Movies.

The infinite desk. Infinite whiteboard. Improved conferencing. Are just added bonuses.

Does Google have a VR play? They explored this with Glass 10 years ago, but that's dead and they don't seem interested in developing a successor.

I'm very weirded out to see all of them go with the massive option. A google glass oriented solution with 2023 level of tech and that can be adapted to any/most pair of glasses but offering much more limited functions (pictures/photo, maps/gps, notification, light AR, ...) would have much more appeal to every day life.

Not saying it's easy, not saying it would work, but it feels like it would be an easier challenge to convince people to wear that all the time.

Now, the question is, how much worse can it be and still sell well? How good is good enough? How soon will we see the plastic iPhone 3G equivalent at half the price, 70% the weight and 150% the battery life? After listening to the first hand experiences I do think Apple is onto something here, and this could be the beginning of the next step, finally going beyond what Douglas Engelbart has already envisioned in terms of digital augmentation of our lifes (on which we're IMO only now getting to a full realisation, almost 60 years later).

[1] listen to yesterday's Cortex podcast, they go over all the details after first hand experience, and it's quite interesting to say the least.

Do I want to wear big goggles? No. Do I, one day, want a device that can magically project anything I want on to my field of vision, and for it to be as realistic as my actual vision?

Hell yeah I do! And we can’t get there unless we go through the ski goggles phase. So, here we are.

I feel the same way about people complaining that the headphone jack was removed. ‘The phone is thin enough!’, they say. No it isn’t! My god where’s your imagination. The phone is good enough when it’s wafer thin and I can have it protein-printed on my arm or whatever.

If we go back in time to the mobile phone era, just before the iphone was released, the mobile market was actually flourishing and very solid: companies like nokia, motorola and blackberry managed to make mobile phones something as common as a TV, almost everyone had one.

At the time Apple introduced the iphone with its touchscreen and virtual keyboard, forever game changers to the whole mobile industry. The rest is history.

VR has been in the market for some time now and despite the fact that competitors haven't reached the level of technology that Apple has unveiled, those cheaper alternatives are by no means something that are either underdeveloped or half-way unusable products. I've tried a pair of Occulus few years ago and found them pretty impressive (putting aside all their flaws).

I must assume that since then these got better and prices actually dropped a bit, and if they haven't they are still way way cheaper than what Apple will be selling next year and I'm sure you can have a ton of fun with budget ones as well.

But yet... Why VR goggles can't be found in homes the same way that TVs, mobile phones and other popular electronic products despite that they are already affordable? Why hasn't this technology became mainstream? Is it maybe due to the fact that the VR experience can't be shared the same way that when we turn on a TV, play with friends with a gaming console on the couch or sit down on a desk with a PC and we share its use? Is it because it lacks that mythical killer VR app that could be a gamer changer? Is it because the industry hasn't released as much software for VR as for other more common devices like consoles, PCs, mobile phones?

It feels as if there's still something inherently missing in VR that won't make you go and buy a pair of goggles no matter how technologically advanced they become. And people spend a lot of money on expensive phones, gadgets and the alike...

Maybe I'm wrong and shortsighted and the answer is actually trivial.

Or gaming.

It’s bulky because/in the sense, how much top technology and work has been designed into it to validate and refine even further the vision with more users and developers.

It’s also bulky in an other sense, because how massive it is to wear still; and how social etiquette around it barely exist (but is also taken into account/proposed/embedded in this first public iteration).

It definitely make sense because it opens a really opiniated conceptual door to a different way of interacting with computers.

I think it's very hard to tell the difference between these things ex ante. Everything that succeeds looks like it was pulled. But many things were pushed before they were pulled. Buying things on the internet, for instance. This was laughed at for quite a while, while a few people and companies were committed to the idea that it was the future. They were right of course, so right that it feels like it was effortless and demanded by the public, but it wasn't. Not at first.

That isn't to say that that will happen with VR either. Just to say that there is a long history of things being pushed hard and finally breaking through and becoming a near universal norm, and there is a long history of things being pushed hard and dying and being completely forgotten.

The promise of VR is to unlock a world free of the constraints of physics. Where physical distance prevents certain styles of communication and interaction - where physical real estate is finite and therefore rivalrous, etc. There are many things that VR, in principle, could solve. Whether or not the tech can deliver those things in a way that partially (or totally?) replaces actual physical reality remains to be seen. It is clear though that if you want to weave tech into the fabric of people's lives in the deepest possible way, something like VR is probably your best bet.

Or generally, anything that's much better experienced directly than through a screen. Think about virtually hiking Mt Everest, diving the Mariana Trench, walking on Mars, etc. The technology certainly isn't there yet, but I can imagine a future where for a majority of the population, especially those with lower income, VR provides the only affordable* escape from reality.

* In a few years obviously, $3500 is far from affordable.

Not computing but 3D TV and 3D movies ?

A far better screen real estate to hardware size ratio than you can get if you dont put something on your head.

Most office workers have been using two or more 22 inch or far larger monitors for a decade now. People buy the largest televisions in their budget and are impressed when their buddy gets a new bigger one. Movie theatres 1) exist when television ownership is common and 2) advertise it when they have particularly big screens.

Laptops make up like half of all computer sales. Plenty of people have been trying to make working on tablets work to shave down a bit more size. Phones are frequently used for media consumption.

If I wasn't a person who existed in the world and used devices, it'd still be perfectly obvious to me that people want to see a lot of stuff at once but they also don't want to lug around the things necessary to do that. I am a person who exists in the world though and therefore have this very problem. I carry a phone everywhere I go and sometimes find myself giving up on tasks, or it not even occurring to me to try them, because I know they'll be a lot easier when I have my laptop. I carry it to less places and find myself doing the same thing, leaving off tasks until I'm at my desk, which I carry nowhere.

I keep seeing people mention an aha moment or killer app needed to make these devices make sense and I honestly dont get it. It doesn't need to satisfy some new want to be incredibly successful. It just needs to be a laptop with far more screen real estate than any actual laptop.

In the simulation field, the advances are already major. There is a huge gap in the gaming experience when playing simulation games for instance.

As a general purpose computer, I see a hint of what it could be, and I am convinced it’s the future. It has to be. It’s too powerful not to be.

Imagine there’s nothing to put on. The computer doctor sprinkles some magic computer dust over you 7 minutes after you are born and you get Apple Vision++++ levels of ability, all of the time. Everything in the world becomes a potential UI. Every action becomes an input. Every surface a display. Look at our total screen time and realize there’s no going back, so we might as well ditch the screens and stop all the squinting.

But I am also convinced this is 30 to 100 years away. There‘s no line of sight on how to build this magic dust and no one is going to wear ski goggles all day.

Since then my opinion has hardly changed that these are gimmicks, and mostly unusable by people with eye sight issues, where already dealing with natural light is an issue, let alone tiny screens a couple of cms away.

Where as nowadays tablets have become a staple and it's very common to own one, and often not own a computer. I ate my words.

So at the moment there's a few players in the VR/AR landscape, maybe something big will come of it, maybe it won't. But I think it's too early to tell

I took my headset off and it was like he had just left the room. I think that being able to provide the feeling that someone you love is there with you (when they are far away) is why people use a lot of tech.

It was a feeling that 2d FaceTime just cannot give you (and it felt like a bigger advancement than going from a phone call to video calls).

If Vision Pro’s face reconstruction thing works well I can see that being the killer app.

The problem so far has simply been that none of the existing headsets work for this. Resolution needs to make it past 30 PPD to be usable for text. All the exiting consumer ones are between 10 and 20 PPD.

You also need the right software. SteamVR has basically nothing by default, you get a blurry view of your desktop if you go the menu and that's it. You can enhance it a little with Steam overlay addons, but it's all a crude "make desktop show up in VR", not a "userinterface build for VR". Oculus is a bit better, but still not great. Microsoft tried with WMR Portal to bring the full Windows desktop into VR and it is about the closest thing to what Apple is doing now, but it was still riddled with problems, lots of bugs and limitations that made it impossible to take full advantage of VR (max window size was restricted to 1920x1080, no way to anchor virtual windows to the real world, no real passthrough mode).

What Apple has shown so far look much better than anything else out there. The resolution is good enough that you can actually read text, the passthrough cameras are good enough that you can actually see and interact with the world around you in proper 3D and color and the software seems to be completely focused on making 2D content in a virtual space work well, something none of the other companies spend much effort on.

There is an alternative reality somewhere where VR went the other direction, focus on making it cheap and accessible and focus and producing proper full VR games, basically the original vision behind Oculus. That could have worked, Oculus delivered a couple of great games in the early days of VR and before Facebook joined them, they were even able to produce $300 headsets. But all that got derailed by Facebook, who raised the price to $600, gave up on PC based VR and forced everything on mobile. They also largely gave up on games and focused instead on "Metaverse", which means that the Quest2 games out know, still look a lot worse than what we had 6 seven years ago on CV1 or even DK1. The insane amount of money Meta has spend so far simply doesn't show in the actual product and especially not in the software.

Anyway, since this alternative reality didn't happen, we are now basically stuck waiting for VR headsets to get enough resolution that 2D content becomes enjoyable in them, as that's the only way VR will get content. Native VR content is still just too rare and the quality is often not great. Apple's VisionPro is the first device that crosses that threshold and has the software to go along with it.

If you dig deep enough, you’ll find that the ubiquitous, always-on, socially acceptable form factor is indeed AR in the shape of glasses. As in Google Glasses but with infinitely more utility. The ability to do anything you can now on your phone and more, powered by a localized and shared augmented experience.

> What would be such indicators?

If you agree on the above as the end goal, one clear indicator of success is “how many times did you not take out your phone?”

Of course any expert in the field will tell you we’re 10+ years away from achieving such technology, due in no small part to the physics of optics and displays. But you can imagine the Apple VisionPro shrinking toward this end state.

The answer is not only different for different people, but very different for some of them. It's a way for trans people to express their real gender in a way that seriously alleviates their dysphoria, or for people to explore sexuality in a place they are fully equipped to defend themselves in, and discover that their biases or prejudices were weaker than they thought, or outright reaction formations to their real-life environment.

Still others use it as an artistic outlet, a mechanism for connecting to people across the world, a sandbox with which to experiment with and learn certain pieces of technology.

It's been juiced up by Facebook money, sure. It's not purely motivated by that by a long shot. There's a demand and perhaps an oversupply in some respects, but the experiences achievable are legitimately delightful if you know how to look for them. Fantastic escape rooms, beautiful gardens, relaxing rooms, sleepy hideouts, fantasy worlds. This is all happening and has been happening for years.

There are of course serious caveats, such as some people being simply physically unable to tolerate it.

It's a rough piece of technology early in its lifetime and it's got a lot of road to cover, but it's already nailed a level of immersion into an artificial world that nothing else has come even remotely close to - and it's everything else that sucks to some moderate degree and needs to catch up and surpass the norm.

The sticking point is the tech is several years off the miniaturisation and power needed to enable the comfortable switching of worlds.

Like anything else in life?

How much it took for the Guthenberg press to be "successful". It took at least 50 years since Guthenberg died bankrupted until there were millions of books being printed and people realised what the printing was by the consequences.

Guthenberg pushed so hard his entire life.

Aviation was not pushed by fanatics that killed themselves for at least 50 years(they were gliders in India thousands of years ago that killed themselves trying to fly) before it became a normal thing.

Read about Otto Lilienthal or the casualty rate of early aviators and then tell me that it was not pushed.

The nuclear bomb was not pushed with project Manhattan, one of the biggest expenditures on earth ever?

Rockets were not pushed? Going to the moon was not pushed? The diode and the transistor were not pushed by the germans and later the Americans?

Lasers were not pushed before we knew what could be done with them? Computers were not pushed?

>I don't think this was the case with any of the major steps in the development of digital computing but would be quite interested if people can think of historical precedent.

The entire Silicon Valley thing was created by the Pentagon at first. It did not went from zero to billions of devices instantly. The military were paying the development of early (ultra expensive)microprocessors in the dozens to power submarines and spaceships, like the hand weaved RAM of the Apollo devices.

The early entire DARPA internet was at first 56Kbits, the entire network!!

Certainly things like Xerox PARC machines were pushed when every single machine did cost a fortune. It was not pulled because Xerox had no idea of what to do with the technology, just like lasers before.

BUT then the excitement faded and I don't find myself wanting to return to VR much. Having something strapped to your face is awkward and tiring.

Tech companies can see the potential because it _is_ breathtaking but are also aware of the drawbacks and hurdles. Zuck decided it was a big enough thing to bet the farm on.

Its a potentially very powerful thing with some big issues that no-one knows how to fix. Hence the buzz and endless talking and companies jostling for position to be the leader without knowing quite where they want to lead us to.

At a basic level of I'd be willing to binge netflix on it rather than a TV. That would be the start.

What if I preferred it to going to the cinema? Already a win.

What if it can make it feel like you're having lunch in a restaurant? Perfect.

It doesn't really do any of these things. More like having wallpaper of a photograph of a restaurant

Just like with VR, the technology wasn't new: I had watched a 3D movie some 30 years ago at a theme park, liked it, threw up and passed out afterwards, for the first and only time in my life - doing it after a rollercoaster was not a great idea. Just like with VR, it required you to put something on your eyes that people found awkward - and ultimately, this was possibly what made them unpopular, if you want to relax, you don't want to focus on your hardware.

A bit like VR, the early glasses were cheap and disposable (just pieces of red/blue plastic); the "pro" versions with active filtering were significantly more expensive and technological. But for all that, they didn't solve the main issue, i.e. they weren't less intrusive, if nothing else more so (heavier, requiring batteries, etc.). In this case, I'm not sure if the Apple vision is a step forward or backward - if I understand correctly it makes the experience "better" than other visors, but it is also bulkier.

A lot of optimism on this technology comes from saying "it is not yet mature, give it time, the first iPhone was very limited, etc.". But the main issues I see seem just too hard to surpass in a few technological iterations: - The experience is limited to the eyes. No matter how magic Apple is, I'm not ready to believe that in 5 years wearing something as simple as a goggle will give me tactile feelings or anything else. Though I'll admit, 3D vision might be enough. - Battery power won't evolve tenfolds. The first iPhone didn't have a shorter battery life than the current ones, and that's because research for better batteries and more efficient CPUs is already cutting-edge - a 2x improvement would be huge already. Everybody just assumes it will get better, but not everything does, or at least not always fast enough. - The main issue everybody notices is lack of apps and, in general, something to do with it. Here, people cite the iPhone as an example of thing that developed a lot of apps, which made all the difference between the first and later versions. This might happen thanks to the Apple Vision Pro, but I'm not ready to believe it without proof. Just a few years ago, Apple pushed hard, very hard, the touch bar on basically all of its users. Certainly more than half the developers (not just mac developers; all developers) had it integrated in their working machine, whether they wanted it or not. Yet, I only saw apps starting integrating functionalities there years later, and it was often half-baked things, and even when they were not I found myself never using them - the old hotkeys, or the F-keys, were easier to memorize, and faster. And Apple did roll back on that, now I have again physical buttons which I very happily use to change screen light or volume.

All in all, maybe this technology will fly, maybe it won't, but if we look at the past we shouldn't forget the large fraction of technologies that didn't make it, or which at most thrived as a niche sector unlikely to ever explode. Not everything that Apple makes needs to be the new iPhone - and why should that be a problem, really?

I went through 2 PCVR headsets and I'd never think: oh this is going to be mainstream (in the present state!).

Those headsets are not comfortable (sweaty); the hardware needed for anything realistic is top tiers; it takes PhD/time to configure (and goes out of sync!); the software ecosystem was(is?) not super stable; the interaction (controllers, tracking) is sometimes awkward (controllers are big, interfere with keyboard and real world). Often it small things like comfortable physical head position vs. position in VR world are not "lined up"

We'd laugh that it takes as much time to get into the VR plane simulator as to drive to the airport to fly real plane!

Compare a VR kit to a monitor pair, or a game controller (imo VR is kind of a cross of the 2) - both are mostly plug an play.

I definitely think VR/AR is the next big think, but not via headsets, but via holograms or whatever it takes to get rid of physical screens and mouses (peripherals in general). You tell me I can have a huge 4K "hologram screen" projecting whatever is on my phone by just clicking a button? I'm sold. I mean, why would I read HN on my tiny phone if I can read it in a 13inch hologram display being projected from my wrist while I'm on the bus? Or a 30inch display when I'm on my couch? Same for whatever you do on the internet.

What Apple has showned us in the demo is the future... but not with headsets (if I go to the supermarket to buy milk, I'm not taking my headset, if I go to the bathroom I'm not taking my headset, if I'm taking the public transportation I'm not taking my headset).

You may think "high definition holograms" are just too sci-fi, but I don't think so. In any case, headsets are just too clumsy. Perhaps Apple's v2 for their headsets becomes just some glasses ala Google glass? In that case I don't know, maybe that gets traction if implemented correctly.

I don't think there's been the Avatar equivalent yet, and though it might take a bit longer, I think there will still be a tipping point where enough people realise it's garbage and Zuckerberg is thrown into a long dark well forever. Followed by the peoples' tim cook right to the stomach.

Slightly more seriously, this stuff reminds me of that book Snow Crash (which I love). But it's never going to be like that, and even if it was, the virtual world aspect of that is a bit of a horrible dystopia. It's like a drug.

Quick question, have you used the HTC Vive?

I have used tons of VR, and they are all cool for about 2 minutes, except the Vive. The Vive was the game changer. Walking around a room, interacting, etc..

The other versions either look bad, have bad controls, etc... Quality VR isnt accessible for $100 despite companies offering you a box for your cellphone. You do need to spend over $1000 to participate in good VR. It prices out lots of people, and the low cost version pushes people away.

1. The need to live vicariously / voyeuristically: it’s possible for me to at least a two-sense experience of sky diving, bungee jumping, F1 / motor cross racing, and many others, including some darker more voyeuristic experiences like sex with someone out of my league, or unfortunately even extremes like murder / suicide. While the extremes are bad, there’s a lot of market for meeting desires in the middle.

2. Current efforts that have physics limitations: I’d like to make my multi-monitor setup on to a couch or car or plane, or even just have more monitors at my desk than my desk allows. I’d like a bigger TV in my small room. These things I want are big, expensive, and limited by physics and money, and the Vision makes them available to me.

So these two things are the killer apps for me - experiences which I would otherwise not have access to, and the removal of physics burdens in my daily work setup.

For me personally I wanted to jump on board the spacial computing for reasons like being able to work in any location but have my awesome setup. Current systems have terrible resolution or are bulky, but I can see the promise. Current entertainment avenues are not tapped (imagine courtside sports seats anywhere, novel ways to engage users, porn, etc.)

I remember similar thoughts about the first wave of tablets. And the first generation or so weren't great. But, the technology matured and now people can use an iPad instead of a full PC for most home uses.

Most of the FAMAG is concerned about advertising (Apple the least, but still), while life nowadays is all about signal to noise. The bandwidth is there, 24/7 connectivity is there, wrt smartphones. Its the noise which can be reduced further, which would increase productivity. What is noise? Stuff you don't want to see, suggestions, lower priority vs higher priority (ie. what is really important to you vs clickbait), and, yes: advertising.

If I could just block all advertising with a AR/VR glasses I'd easily shell out 1k EUR every 2 years for the hardware (not 3k, but YMMV as I don't earn a Netflix dev wage). In fact, perhaps a good UI on it could replace a smartphone. Except, the smartphone UI is going to be in (comparison) mature, its very unlikely a new hardware interface is going to be great right away. Smartwatch needed time (and cannot replace smartphone full-time at all), smartphone needed time (vs desktop/laptop, see mid '00s before capacitive touch), foldables are going to fill the niche which tablets/phablets provide, and now we got a hardware UI like this released by Apple (yes, I'm aware of predecessors including Meta/Facebook Quest, Magic Leap, and Google Glass). Also, it has the disadvantage of being visually omnipresent to others. A Google Glass is much less obvious. And yeah, walking around in Amsterdam with OSM AR (no, not Google) for all the buildings but without all the advertising would (after transition period) be a massive, massive plus to me. Add Wikipedia on top of it, with TTS and voice input pivoted towards my own voice as a bonus. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if I could just blacklist certain buildings like Nutella bars and red light distract. Yes, I can see it as a future, but not by FAMAG (Musk isn't sane enough; it'd be someone sane with deep pockets who's not into advertising).

> for the pursuit of. . . What exactly?

Experience. Fun. Productivity. Emotion. All of the same things we look at screens for. I’m surprised that’s not clear.

People (homo sapiens) have sought these things in many mediums for as long as we’ve been sapiens. There is nothing categorically different about seeking these things in the kind of immersion that (so far) only headsets can give.

In the future we’ll have glasses and then BCI. I’m excited for both.

But if you’re seeing XR as pushed by waves hands with no consume pull or enthusiast hacking, I think you’re not looking with truly open eyes.

Immersive is the key here. There are entertainment things where I think that could be killer, maybe seeing a concert from impossible to get vantage points, maybe viewing the nfl game from on the field, maybe some movies and some games. Do I want to be immersed in work? I’ll write code and you know what I do at times? I go outside for a walk, my quality goes up and the problems get solved. Same thing doing data analysis, I’ll find some interesting bits and then I need to think, maybe I could have more ‘screen real estate” in VR but I don’t know if I want it, need it, or could actually use it.

There is something about production to consider too. There are things in the nfl games that you don’t see, maybe some people want to, I’m pretty sure a lot don’t want to. “Taking some football outa guys” is a thing. Someone on another thread mentioned climbing Everest; you never do that for the views, people actually die doing it and then others just sort of pass by their dead bodies because the quest they are on is so so very different than seeing the world from the top of Everest. Maybe that’s the point, but it’s not for everyone.

Been a gamer my entire life.

Ever since getting into VR 4 years ago, I basically haven't played a single "flat" (non-VR) game.

> pursuit of... what exactly

Experiences that you literally cannot get in real life without going to jail or dying. It's the same value proposition that gaming in general provides, but far more immersion and realism.

I have to admit that I don't actually know exactly what a Smart Board is or exactly what its capabilities are, but I get the impression that the replacement cost of such a device is multiple orders of magnitude greater than that of a simpler device, the Overhead Projector, so common in classrooms thirty years ago. And I have to ask the question, is the educational value multiple orders of magnitude greater? Also consider that you don't need a degree in electrical engineering (and other domain/manufacturer specific knowledge) to understand how the mirrors and light bulbs make the older device function, and to repair it.

I fear this attitude comes off as crotchety old man get-off-my-lawn a little bit, but I think if we take a step back and make objective comparisons we might find that we've been had by the marketing department quite a few times in recent years. And I just hate to see public schools (which I think are so desperately important, and don't have the disposable cash) taken advantage of by the marketing departments with budgets larger than the engineering department of their firm. I would be dismayed to see my kids' schools investing into VR/AR any time soon, but I could see it happening.

People wear sunglasses to avoid eye contact, Roddy Pipers character wore one in the movie "They Live" to see the real message - I would love one that blocks irl ads. Perhaps when they're small and hackable enough.

Joking aside, I do think gaming is important to bootstrap VR. Once it's cheap enough and many people have it, it will be much easier to build other things. Personally I think interactive 3D story-telling could be a big one.

The main problem seems to be the execution. Nobody wants to have a huge thing attached to their head for hours. Maybe this will change if headset become as lightweight as regular glasses but we're still very far away from that.

IRL adblock, please. I'd pay up to 5k if it worked decently well.

as for AR, google glass has demonstrated convincing value as a heads up display for factory floors and other places where people need to interact with complex machinery. I am excited about the potential in that.

I remember gaming even like early-mid 2000s was a "geeky/nerdy" thing to do. Now everyone(ish) plays games. Browsing the web was a geeky thing to do & tbh I kind of miss how the Internet was without the masses of the general population; the Internet has changed.

But the same thing will happen to VR, Valve/HTC and Facebook created a burgeoning market that Apple is now trying to capitalise on and "bring to the masses hurr durr".

But VR/AR will be very big eventually, imo. Once prices get down to a mid-flagship phone level, once hardware is lightweight and small like a pair of glasses, easy & convenient to set up and more non-gaming applications that make sense for AR/VR are available it will take off. Maybe not with older gens but that's been true for all of history.

The thing is, although it was downvoted, nobody responded to it. Given that every trend in computing technology is to make it more seamless, more integrated, less downtime; and data was the new oil on which AI is fueled; and that only a handful of Big Tech companies control the way most laypeople do computing; and, that these trends show signs not of stopping but of accelerating, explain how that answer is wrong.

Silicon Valley does not value anything that can't be quantified, because value, by computer logic, must always be represented by a number. And since software will eat the world, therefore it must be a law of the universe (as in, might makes right) that the summation of you is a sum - a number - to be used in a greater calculation, for someone else's profit.

Did that glimpse in the mirror show you a side of yourselves you desperately wish to believe didn't exist?

I’m not a Zuck fanboy but I have enjoyed the quest 2 thoroughly and plan to get the 3 when it releases.

I do think the Apple vision pro looks amazing but the second I heard the price it was laughable. Obviously I am not the target audience. I’m not sure who is to be honest.

While not always successful, they actually add legitimacy to many of the markets they get into. Time will tell if it happens here; I'm not holding my breath.

Just like I have a PlayStation in the family+friends living room and a multi-monitor Mac setup in my study, I'm going to have an Oculus in the living room and a Vision Pro in the study. These are complementary things.

As excited as I am about Apple Vision, Mark is right about this. Most of Apple’s demos don’t show the user being active, and the Vision’s price is anything but demographic even though it’s fair, given that it’s a miniaturized MacBook with magic powers

On other hand, the Quest and its apps make you move. Most of the apps on Quest are low key cardio workouts, though it’s not initially apparent to most users when they’re fighting ninjas or dodging bullets.

Do I think Apple Vision is incapable of what the Quest is capable of in terms of helping their users be active? Definitely not. Anything the Quest can do I’m sure Vision can do and then some. I’m also sure that future Apple Vision spots will highlight this. However, Apple is not showing anything at the moment.

> Mark has got to be terrified. The power of Apple is the tight and efficient integration of hardware and software.

I’m sure he is to a degree, but meta needed Apple to enter the market. It would be much worse for meta if Apple didn’t validate the often criticized and ridiculed AR VR industry.

While meta has been able to make a revolutionary product at a great price point, it’s been hampered by

1. meta’s poor past reputation,

2. meta’s terrible marketing & messaging. The Super Bowl ad was nonsensical to normal people,

3. the intimidating form factor of most VR headsets including the Quest aka face buckets of isolation. Many normal adults refuse to put it on their faces without a lot of coaxing, and

4. not being able to market the Quest to children. They are the largest demographic who just intuitively understand VR AR. They also have the highest retention. (There is one old study that shows that it may be harmful to children, but many people have criticized its methodology.)

Now that Apple has fixed the messaging for the industry, Apple can dominate the high end while Meta can take everything else. People who are buying Vision likely would not buy a Quest and vice versa

Meta won’t have a real fight until Samsung & Google re-enter the space.

None of this will be relevant soon to consumers, except maybe games, and then it will be console makers who will push it and cash in. For Facebook and Apple it's just shareholder porn.

I imagine wireless latency would be too high here. I think they mentioned a 12 ms number to avoid motion sickness.

I never use my Quest sitting down. I use it as a roomscale device for, e.g., boxing, or playing table tennis or golf with family in other countries.

The Apple device looks great, but if it was the same price as a Quest 3 and I could only buy one, I'd choose the Quest 3, no questions.

No matter how good Oculus is, Apple will be the VR experience everyone will want to have. Apple will sell it vastly better and make it far more desirable than anything Meta can manage.

If I have to strap on an invasive device to my face, what company am I going to trust more - the one that has been hammering in its “privacy” credentials for years, or the one that incites riots and whose founder is memed to be a humanoid?

I think Apple are much better at UX and platform building than Meta, this weeks WWDC visionOS videos(1) show impressive depth in their research and thinking for all types of users of spatial-based computing.

Regardless of the differences in how these 3D platforms are approached, apple's commitment to their platforms along with iterative improvement is the secret sauce to giving 3rd parties the confidence they need to invest time and money developing apps.

On the other hand I keep hearing that enthusiasm for the Metaverse is waning amongst Meta staff, that's usually my sign to not get involved, or have all of my efforts/revenue suddenly vanquished should Zuckerberg change his mind.

On the topic of battery power: While I think that the battery power of "up to 2 hours" is not a long time in comparison to how long I use my computing devices, I also think this gen 1 device isn't really a mobile device where that matters, also we've seen apple take laptops from a few hours of charge to 20+ hours.

(1) https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc2023/

It’s almost like, after spending $10B on the space, he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about /s

I found this hilarious too. The HTC Vive was the "walking around your virtual space" headset, and Meta deliberately marketed the Oculus as couch-based, because they didn't think people actually wanted more than that.

Apple has a huge advantage with its vertical integration and nearly complete control of the entire stack. Android being a janky/buggy/glitchy mess is the icing on the cake.

Is Microsoft today in a fundamentally problematic position ?

Apple has the spotlight and a higher evaluation, but I'm not sure Google or Microsoft "haven't ended well".

> A personal device like these headsets needs to be delightful.

The number of people willing to pay for "delightful" is pretty small though. Even as today, the iPhone isn't winning on delight, it's primarily on the ecosystem, green bubbles, game payments etc., as we've heard in the numerous trials and hearings from Apple execs.

Isn't this what Android did? They seem like they're doing fine enough

I dont know man. Historically who has been in Mark's position with 10 Billion+ $$ to spend on any one thing?

I think Zuckerberg would be elated if it plays out like iPhone vs Android.

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position.

market share of android vs iOS in 2023:

> Android 71.63

> iOS 27.71

Meta doesn't need to dominate the market. Being the Android to Apple's iOS or the Windows to Apple's macOS is way more than fine for Meta's business. iPhone's did $250b in revenue in 2022. Meta as a whole did $117b.

They aren't looking to replace Apple, they are just trying to find a way to get their revenue growing again. It's a huge win in their eye's if Quest3 contributes reasonably well to bringing their 2023 revenue to about $130b.

If there was a genuine third company competing with Meta then that would be a problem for them. Valve and Pico are roughly 0% the size of Meta and Apple. They just won't have the resources to actually compete. Google has been rumored to be working on a headset. If that's the case and they didn't fire that entire org then that would be Meta's only real competition for second place.

What made you buy it?

> Today, of course, Apple ships an excellent stylus that they are happy to sell you for $129.

Apple Pencil does not work with iPhone, only with iPads, which... makes sense. Artists use them as drawing tablets. But nobody uses a Apple Pencil with an iPhone.

Although Meta will sell more units in the short-term due to Apple's pricing, I do think they will have a tough time catching Apple on the hardware. The eye-tracking, <12ms image processing and display, and the M2 are things that Meta is well behind on.

Zuck mentioned that activity and "doing things" are Meta advantages, but people don't want to exercise while gaming or consuming entertainment.

The thing is, it is enough for general use. The Apple Pencil (or whatever they call it) is a specialised tool for people who need the extra precision.

The difference between modern no-stylus-needed touch screens and old stylus-required touch screens is exactly that, with the old screens they aren’t functional at all without the stylus.

I'm also curious if Apple plans to use iPhones as an input mode. Speech to text is nice but I'd like to be able to discretely type something.

I don’t think Meta really wants its devices to be out of reach for billions of people, limiting its data collection and the future it imagines with vast amounts of behavioral data collected from all those people.

If Meta were able to create an independent company that doesn’t have to have tracking or profiling or advertising or connected to its surveillance properties like Facebook and Instagram, it could create good devices at high enough prices to compete with Apple on the experience and quality. But its not in Meta’s DNA to leave such things alone.

"EyeSight" may seem like a gimmick in demo videos, but I've got the impression it truly was a key missing stair step to general usability for AR/VR.

(Also, I agree, Meta's playbook could be to try to be the somewhat more open platform here. I doubt that's Meta's vision of what they are doing though.)

All the progress of mankind has culminated to this one point in time where we can create entirely new realities before our eyes in stunning fidelity.

And what do we use this technology for? Going to work. Talking to people about work. Sitting in the dark watching pictures and videos by yourself.

The Hololens was a "power move" headset that had to repeatedly re-adjust its target market because the price was too high. Apple could end up in the same spot if they can't iteratively bring down the price.