Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab | Hacker News Reader

Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab

9to5mac.com

154 pointsmikece95 comments

From a developers perspective, Apple’s computer vision frameworks are already top-notch. I’m wondering how AI could further enhance the experience on the Apple Vision Pro. The greatest deficiency seems to me currently to lie in ideas for how this technology can be used sensibly.

Jarvis OS?

Apple Vision Pro in its current state almost looks like a parody of future tech. Heavy.. bulky … limited battery… limited peripheral vision. Just watch YouTube videos of people using the device. So far version 1.0 is a swing and a miss in my book.

If you consider it a development kit (albeit a very expensive one) it makes more sense.

Just like the first iPhone wasn't practical for everyone, this will require a few more generations.

(Although I suspect it's never going to be useful for me, with my weird prescription.)

True, but it seems more like it's placing a bet in the VR space like the first iPhone did. No one wanted iPhone v1 forever, and so I think the next few versions of the Vision Pro will be pretty interesting if this is the starting point. It also raises the bar of expectation for other VR/AR headsets. Seems like a net benefit for an area of tech that has been pretty stagnant for a while.

iphone 1 was way better than any of the alternatives at the time. Probably a better analogy were the bulky portable phones of the early 90s, which ultimately became smartphones, but after two decades!

Well, my point was that the first iPhone set a standard for smartphones that wasn't there before. After iPhone v1, people knew that "apps" were how things were going to be packaged and sold in the App Store and other app stores. It was better than anything else at the time like the Vision Pro seems to be also.

The App Store didn't launch until a year after the iPhone.

Originally, it was 'Write web apps that run in Safari'

Sadly, because that original web app vision likely would have prevented App Store revenue from twisting corporate priorities.

Vision Pro is way way better than the alternatives.

And the original iPhone was almost unusably slow and really didn’t do much.

Waiting half a minute for NYT to load and then seeing constant checkerboards got old very quickly.

Vision Pro isn't better at playing any games nor much different for watching movies.

Right now the Apple TV feels like a closer match than the iPhone to be honest. We had he same vibe of putting some games on it but no native controller, and a "revolutionary" remote control with voice commands and a touchpad.

AVP has a chance to be good at office tasks and casual tv watching for singles, but that's assuming other players don't get there faster than it takes Apple to iterate. If for instance the next xreal glass sets the bar too high the whole office/virtual monitor angle will be an uphill battle.

The first iPhone completely failed pretty much every market besides the US. The lack of MMS (critical at the time) and the very expensive price made competitors look much better at the time. It's only with the 3G that iPhones took off.

I use my Vision Pro every single day. I love sitting in my yard in the sun with my Mac mirrored in the center, a music player hanging out on my left, a web browser with documentation on the right. Using the double loop strap I don't even notice I'm wearing it after a few minutes and I treat the battery more as a UPS than something to run off of except for when I go make myself coffee and play a game or watch a video while doing so.

Having used other VR headsets (like the Valve Index) the Vision Pro is clearly leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, not just in hardware but software as well. After using the index for a bit everything would always feel a bit "weird" after taking the headset off. I don't get that at all with the Vision Pro.

I can't wait for VisionOS 2.0 to deliver a closer macOS integration (being able to give individual macOS applications their own windows (à la VMWare Fusion), and use eye tracking as the cursor) but even the current version is - for my specific use case - an absolute game changer.

What do you do wearing a Vision Pro in your yard?

I'm still mostly surrounded by large 2D panels of information (Xcode, Safari, terminal windows, etc.). I do fill the space with these panels. It's not uncommon for me to have 5-6 things around my Mac's virtual display.

I've been on a quest to maximize my flow state for over a decade, it's been a terrible beast to tame with my ADHD. I'm finding the Vision Pro helps because of the intuitive nature of the UI. My brain expects the thing I'm looking at to be the thing that receives input, and this is naturally the case in VisionOS.

I'm also having a ton of fun learning Swift and RealityKit, something I likely would never have picked up if it wasn't for this iPad strapped to my face.

How do you find coding outside different?

Honestly curious, as it's been more distracting to me, the times I've tried it in 2D form.

The Vision Pro takes away all the glare you'd normally get on a screen, and (to me) that basically reduces the distractions down to zero. If I need fewer distractions still, I'll pull up one of the environments (I like the moon!) and then all visual noise is drowned out entirely.

So you use it for web surfing?

While working it's a combination of web surfing, terminals and documentation in PDF form. When I'm not working, watching movies on the thing is an absolute treat and Moonlight works pretty flawlessly for large-screen gaming.

Similar sentiment at Blackberry when they looked at the first iPhone. Forgetting that it is a long play. And that hardware will improve every iteration.

Similar sentiment as to when Google looked at the Homepod, or when Amazon looked at the Apple TV, probably.

I get people privileging successful stories, but there's about as much meh products or failures as well, at least arguments shouldn't be about past unrelated products.

What makes you bullish that Apple will be better than Meta or Valve in this specific field for this specific product ?

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Can you elaborate on the “sensible” part? Do you not see applications for it or do you believe the applications are dangerous or not useful.

From my perspective it feels like a combination of investors thinking the gold rush will be hardware-gated during an ongoing dunning kruger crises in design as it relates to software. The interest isn't there, so most of the ideas are "your fridge could order groceries! your toilet could phone the doctor!" level.

One interesting coincidence is that the CEO worked previously at a startup that was also acquired by Apple (Emotient)

correlation implies causation

Second time makes the process a lot easier!

Less training and culture fit.

You know the guys, you speak the same language and everybody likes money. Perfect fit.

Interesting. 2 times acquired haha.

Harbinger of Applocalypse?

(For customers; I have no doubt investors and the core team are happy.)

Coincidence or the fact that he already had the insider connections to make the second deal happen?

Seems like they will really push VisionOS, which is cool. Hopefully this leads to innovative ways to use it, because those initial videos of pasta timers and "smarter" vacuuming were not at all what I wanted.

What do you want instead?

I want a mini game as I chop cucumbers. And a wall of my achievements that’s shared with anyone in proximity.

Distracting people with mini games while they're holding a knife sounds like a bad idea.

EU is coming up with a consent popup to fix this situation. It will flash a hazard warning and will turn on haptic feedback till you drop the knife.

Nitpick: The EU didn't mandate intrusive consent popups. That was malicious compliance and/or laziness by advertisers, GDPR "tool" developers, and website owners. Website developers could've put an "opt in to tracking" option in a separate settings page that users would click on a gear icon in the top right corner to access.

Why does it have to be a "distracting" experience? What if the game was showing you where to cut to get uniform slices and grading the uniformity of your cuts? Then you'd be focused on the activitiy at hand while still enjoying that sweet sweet gamified dopamine hit.

I prefer the count-the-rice-grains-in-a-sushi-roll genre instead.

I can't wait for the day games like "PowerWash Simulator" or "Supermarket Simulator" come to VR. Imagine, you could wash stuff or work at a supermarket, while also exercising your body!

(/s, but I'm sure it will happen at some point.)

People should really use a mandoline rather than a knife while playing mini games. You'll slice both your cukes and fingers much more evenly.

If I were within your proximity, I can assure you I have no interest in your minigame progress while you chopped cucumbers. I would however hope that you had avoided physical injury.

I think it was juicy sarcasm. I laughed!

Apologies for explaining the joke, but pretty sure the cucumber chopping and wall of achievements is a reference to https://vimeo.com/46304267

Oh wow, it's been a while since I've seen a vimeo link. Can't believe it's still a thing

This sounds like a great way to chop off fingertips. Take it from someone who has done "just the tip" once, a sharp knife will do it with almost no effort, just like slicing through a tomato

Personally for me: A real smart assistant that knows all the context, calendar invites, messages, photos from using Apple products for many years.

Alternatively: Siri that can reliably turn lights on and off again.

At this point I'd be satisfied with a Siri is that just a literal link to a command line. It's horribly useless as it is now, 80% or less accuracy on basic things.

I want that too, but it'll have to be a lot more secure, as now it would be trivial to record me saying Hey Siri and play that back.

Games! This device begs for high end VR games!

Without controllers?

With a 2 hour battery life?

Can it not be plugged in and operated with a very long cable? That’s what I do with my Quest 3.

After social media depleted the dopamine receptors, now time to give in the final punch :D.

I want to force kitchen staff to wear this and have it remind them to change gloves based on what they’ve touched either being a potential allergen or contaminant. Makes me cringe when I see people who work with food also working the register, for instance. Too easy to get lazy and not change the gloves.

Sounds dystopian. Would you want to be forced to wear a heavy headset that nagged you to comment your code and write unit tests?

If it means that I get to work with well commented and tested code, that might be worth it.

It's an interesting philosophical dilemma.

What else would you be willing to force on everyone to improve (in your opinion) your circumstances?

We clearly do this a bit (taxes, vaccines, etc), but finding the threshold is very tricky, and can lead to pretty authoritarian environments.

Well, as someone living in the United States, I live with the saddening understanding that our military spending indicates that we're willing to immiserate large swaths of the world's population for increasingly diminishing returns.

It's authoritarian enough that I have no choice but to support our military decisions through the taxes I pay.

It's colonialism without the responsibility of administering large populations.

I don't know if there's a solution though, there are other sharks vying to do far worse.

We’ve already agreed to certain food standards. The fact that people don’t follow them is enough for me to say we need something more strict. Is it a headset? Maybe not. But periodic training and availability of PPE aren’t doing the job either. The shortage of labor at the low end of the market doesn’t help, either. What I’d rather have than a germophobic headset is for people to take pride in their work (whether you serve food or write code), but that also seems to be a lost cause. I’m lucky if I can get a restaurant to count the number of items in the bag before handing it to the delivery driver.

If it meant that my code wouldn't make other people sick...

Who says it has to be heavy? While I’m wishing I’ll wish for it to weigh the same as a regular pair of glasses…

> Makes me cringe when I see people who work with food also working the register, for instance. Too easy to get lazy and not change the gloves.

Where did you see that? I've seen people not change gloves before touching the register, but definitely change gloves after.

Seems a horrible use case.

this seems like micromanagement taken to the next level and I hope if any such thing becomes "normal" that legislation will stop it. We aren't robots meant to react to green and red spots on an AR headset.

This joke gets made a lot, but I really don't want to live on this planet any more.

I've spent a lifetime in software and what I want more than anything is to shut it all off.

Around 2000-2005 I was in the “plug my brain into the Internet!” crowd.

Now if you gave me a magic button that could permanently un-invent the whole thing… I really might press it.

You might want to read Manna.

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Their website (2021 version):

https://web.archive.org/web/20210311020240/https://datakalab...

11 employees on Linkedin

The death of a company is when it’s acquired by Google/Microsoft/Apple. Founders get the golden parachute, investors get their 100X exit.

Whoever is left after the acquisition is left to babysit the dinosaurs. Maybe leadership decides to shelve the IP, kill the project and any active development. Move promising assets to other teams or transfer them as backfill.

After dust settles. The “dead weight” is killed off.

Are WhatsApp, Yoube, and Instagram dead? All acquisitions.

Consider also that many companies would never be started if their founders had no option of selling them.

And closer to Apple Shazam and Shortcuts!

Do they have to disclose how much they paid?

Not if the acquired isn't public.

Apple is publicly listed, so Apple would have to disclose it if it was material (sufficiently high price).

As a rule of thumb, not if immaterial to their financials, which in often the case for Apple given their size and M&A strategy (they rarely go for any sizeable acquisitions)

Sometimes you can find a reference to it in the buyer's the next quarterly (10-Q) or annual (10-K) filing, but since again this is small, Apple will likely only mention it in passing and any sum paid will either be missing or lumped with a bunch of items to make it undiscernable. No upside in disclosing

And then there's the issue of value vs dollars. Even if we knew how much they paid in dollars, we wouldn't know how much it was worth without some metric for what they bought.

The vanilla public-to-public case for stable industries like widget manufacturers is one company buys another for their future earnings or cashflows, hence ratios like P/E (Price per share divided by earnings per share) or Enterprise Value/EBITDA ((Market Cap+Debt+SimilarStuff)/EBITDA, with the usual caveat that EBITDA is not a perfect proxy for cash flow but it's somewhat more observable)

In this case they likely bought IP and possibly some talent, so valuation there is a bit different. I don't have much experience with acquihires but I guess it just comes down to how much these specific folks required to take the deal rather than walk away...

Thanks for the explanation. I figured it should appear in their quarterly and annual filing as u said.

Since the startup is quite young I would also agree Apple could be interested in their talent.

Interestingly, not the founders:

> The report says that Datakalab’s two founders did not join Apple, but multiple other employees did make the jump.

Perhaps they're interested in IP, too. In any case, I don't quite know how to read Apple's strategy of picking small startups (PA Semi and Anobit being, in retrospect, surprisingly small for their impact).

To the European Commission, yeah. To the public, no.

So do we know how much it cost

Never heard of them. Anything particularly interesting about this acquisition; they do many?

Does this mean Siri can soon do more than setting a timer ? … even that doesn’t work sometimes

Probably not, since this seems to be about on-device computer vision.

Maybe Siri will be able to see that users are pissed off at it though?

Not Mistral, for anyone else that reads the comments first.

If the author was smart, they left the name out on purpose so people would click to check if it was mistral.

You saved me that click.

What is mistral

French LLM company, founded by former meta engineer + a former French minister for good political leverage, they made the news after they raised €105M on a slide deck last June. They are quite close to the state of the art in terms of LLMs, both closed and open weights.

somehow the BLOOM model was designed and implemented in France quite a long time ago (in LLM years).. so there is an informed crowd making leadership allocations..

Does clickbait still work? I feel like I am savvy to it but maybe it’s an illusion ha

I clicked to see if it was Mistral, so yep, it works.

I don't think it is in this case, it's just expecting that the reader hasn't heard of Datakalab and that the interesting thing is Apple and speculating about what they want with whatever they buy.