Comment by Yusefmosiah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yusefmosiah | Hacker News Reader

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In this clash of visions, Apple wins by default. Not because Apple has a track record of setting the computer interface paradigm for the whole industry, but because Apple actually has its own vision — “spacial computing”. Zuck, on the other hand, aims to realize a sci-fi dystopia that he didn’t envision. Neal Stephenson did. Zuck didn’t found Oculus either.

Now, Zuck may be the world’s greatest opportunist; copying, acquiring, optimizing, and scaling technologies that have already demonstrated product-market-fit. I sincerely admire his executive excellence.

With this in mind, Apple Vision Pro has validated Meta’s pivot to hardware. If Zuck swallows his pride and pivots the Quest to copying Apple, Meta has the opportunity to own the Android of spacial computing, enabling low-cost devices, collecting data, and selling microtargeted ads. This will allow Meta to continue as a globally dominant entity, and Zuck will remain one of the world’s wealthiest men.

But will Zuck’s quest to be respected as a visionary cloud his judgment and jeopardize his empire?

Apple's vision is the Microsoft HoloLens. I was walking around with apps floating in front of me (and staying in rooms where I placed them) years ago.

It's a neat gimmick but not worth the asking price because there's not $3500 of value you're extracting out of it.

Maybe $500 of value because it's neat? Not sure. It's great at presenting virtual screens (I don't need one) and non-game 3D content which will be a handful of 3D movies and novelty apps where you can explode a hologram of something.

Apple didn't coin the term spatial computing. It's been used in the industry for a long time. They are both copying other's visions.

They didn't invent the mouse either, they just popularized it. Personally I like this term much better, so I hope we all start using it.

VR, AR, XR, mixed reality... these are too specific and fussy. "Spatial computing" encompasses them all in a fuzzy way that to me has the right granularity for most conversations about this stuff.

> because Apple actually has its own vision — “spacial computing”

Lol. It was called “spatial computing” at Facebook for years long before the metaverse rebrand.

there's also a third much more likely possibility: VR is still a novelty/gimmick experience and neither apple or zuck or any other company will make it mainstream, no matter how much money they burn on it.

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