Hacker News Reader

Comment by NBJack | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure Mark was actually counting on it. It doesn't make it a good idea, but Apple tends to set the bar for status symbols. Smartphones existed before the iPhone. PC laptops existed before MacBooks. Portable digital music players existed before iPods.

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.

View on HN

>Smartphones existed before the iPhone. PC laptops existed before MacBooks.

You make a good point and I'd like to add to it. What is interesting is that all modern phone design grew out of the designs of the original iPhone and all modern laptops grew out of the design of the original Powerbook. If you scroll down on the second link below you'll see that the Powerbook is the first one that looks like a modern laptop.

https://www.cultofmac.com/145083/what-phones-looked-like-bef...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laptops

I don’t think smartphone adoption was held back by the lack of a sufficient status symbol. Apple didn’t bring a revolutionary status symbol to market to make smartphone adoption explode. It brought a really good product that was valued because of how useful it was. Apple’s headset will take off if it proves to be actually useful, otherwise it won’t.

It will certainly have to be a strong product to succeed in the market, irrespective of whether it's a status symbol, I agree.

And if this is a product to be used on your couch at home alone, who cares how it looks?

But some people imagine this being used by world travellers to translate signs in foreign languages, by laptop users in coffee shops to have a huge screen, by parents to take hands-free video of their kid's first steps, by mass transit passengers to watch movies, and so on.

If the product's success relies on being worn in public - people will have to want to be seen wearing it.

While true, Apple has long made products people view as stylish and mainstream. VR advertised by Zuck isn't taken seriously (by most), but Apple will be. At the end of the day, there will be more consumer eyeballs on the devices now that Apple has entered the fray, and likely consumers that weren't even looking at VR devices before. That's probably a net win for everyone in the space.

Of course these devices existed but every time Apple raised the bar. MP3 players existed before Ipod but with limited storage. The first Ipod was really usable with its HDD. Smartphone were a thing but touch interface is what made the Iphone something unique. Let see if Apple is really bringing something new here, the jury is still out.

Famously, the original iPod had "less space than a Nomad".

The Nomad was the size of a CD player… The ipod was fitting in a pocket.

The Nomad also had an absurdly slow UI.

Having had one, that Nomad was absolutely terrible, space or no. It was cheap though.

Facebook isn't a hardware company, all their similar ventures are essentially duds. They will like the market legitimacy but they are more likely in the position of Palm when the iPhone was announced (ie, have been in the market with tepid success for years, then eclipsed by Apple).

Apple's core strength is the hardware/software vertical integration, but another strength is that they know how to partner with others, even competitors (Intel/MS/Google/Netflix/IBM/you name it) if it makes their product more cohesive in a way they couldn't do alone.

The first thing I did after watching the demo was sending congrats to a friend working in a competing company. Apple entering the market and selling is a great validation point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com