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Why is Apple asleep at the wheel with VR?

29 points by codybrown 11y ago

anonyfox 11y ago
Personally I don't care much for VR in general. It's more like the new opium for the masses once it's affordable. While VR promotes escaping in virtual realities (hence, the name), Apple is looking for ways to improve your actual world with it's products (no marketing intended). This is where AR will matter, not VR. Google kinda pioneered here with Glass, Apple gave it a shot with it's wearable devive (watch), and I'm super excited what will come next! Alone glasses that don't suck visually (people shouldn't notice the difference from a distance) and an all-day-battery-life would be features I'd spend $1000 upwards on, just because.
- scient 11y ago
  How does it feel being such an Apple fanboy? :)
- calgoo 11y ago
  I agree, im really looking forward to AR systems. They are just so much more useful then VR. Sure, VR has its places like gaming, movies, documentaries etc. but AR is something that could be implemented in our daily lifes to really enhance them. The social network could actually extend into the real world.
- Oletros 11y ago
  How is the Apple Watch an AR device?
Mithaldu 11y ago
Apple doesn't innovate. It combines proven technologies into polished products. When VR has proven itself, with R&D investments of other companies, Apple will release a near-perfect refinement of all things VR and everyone will hail them as the savior who brought VR to the world.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  Apple won't have pornography. This will kill their VR ambitions.
  - xemoka 11y ago
    Because pornography hasn't found any way to be available on Apple platforms?
- BuckRogers 11y ago
  Yes, that's what Microsoft used to do. As odd as it sounds because that doesn't 'sound' like leadership to those who don't understand how technology and science works as iterative processes. That was when they were the de facto industry leader for decades. Now Apple is that leader. It's not a slight to say Apple is the new Microsoft. It's a massive accomplishment to have taken the mantle of the tech industry leader that everyone looks to. Everyone, whether it's on top of love, hate or indifference, wants to comment on Apple. That's how you know you've won (the money probably doesn't hurt either).
- vlunkr 11y ago
  > It combines proven technologies into polished products. Is that not innovation? Maybe technically the iPhone was just a combination of existing technologies, but it went above and beyond them to the point that it was essentially new.
  - dave2000 11y ago
    No, it's marketing more than innovation.
    - allsystemsgo 11y ago
      I'm sure their hardware engineers would beg to differ.
      - secstate 11y ago
Cshelton 11y ago
Note: Have not read article, going from title. Apple is usually not a first to market type. They are a first to market with an amazing, polished, product type. They'll wait to see what gets proved in the market and what doesn't.
- smt88 11y ago
  > They are a first to market with an amazing, polished, product type That hasn't been true for a long time. The iPad might have been the last product fitting that description, and it was released in 2010.
  - simonh 11y ago
    Not the Apple watch, which is selling faster than the iPhone or iPad were at this point after launch and has captured ~70% of the smart watch market? Ok, 'amazing' and 'polished' are aesthetic judgements on which reasonable people can disagree. How much better would it have to do to count, in your opinion?
    - smt88 11y ago
      The iPod, iPhone, and iPad redefined (you might even say created) their categories. People have argued that tablets are fairly useless in the end, but the iPad still made tablets mainstream and is arguably still the best tablet. The watch did none of those things. I saw lukewarm reviews at best, and I've never met anyone who raved about having one. Capturing 70+% of the smart watch market is probably more a function of demographics, since a smart watch is a huge luxury, than of the quality of the product. How much better would Apple have to do? It would have to make smart watches mainstream. For VR, it would have to make VR mainstream. That's the bar that they set in the past. (Note that I despise Apple and am certainly not just being nostalgic.)
bryanlarsen 11y ago
"I’m willing to bet there is a high stress team in the basement of Apple working on an End to End VR solution but it could be years before it sees the light of day." Sure, that sucks for developers and us on the bleeding edge, but it doesn't hurt Apple one bit. At the most optimistic, it'll take 2-3 years for VR to become mainstream, and as long as Apple comes out with a polished Apple-like solution by then, they won't miss out on the market. If their offering is compelling then content will be ported to it. If they wait much longer than 2-3 years competing solutions may achieve critical mass. At this point, releasing any solution before nVidia's Pascal and/or AMD's Arctic Islands is available would be just silly. Maybe we'll see something in September.
Loque 11y ago
VR is not yet 'here' and is not currently delivering, but it is promising a lot. The form factor alone has challenges which the public will not be willing to sacrifice for the experience, which could turn out to be mostly a gimmick. Some things people don't think about; -) looking at your keyboard/input device whilst wearing a VR headset -) being the same room as other people for prolonged periods of time with a headset -) sharing experiences with other people close to you -) what are you going to experience on VR, that needs VR so bad? Who is going to pay/develop and what is this content going to be... can it actually deliver, making good immersive software is incredibly hard. -) and then cost...
- notjustanymike 11y ago
  What are you going to experience on VR, that needs VR so bad? Elite: Dangerous. DiRT Rally. Minecraft. Movies, and interestingly, documentaries. These are all currently available. Further down the line, VR will replace multi-screen setups. As a developer I'm very excited to code in a VR IDE.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    It'll be great for video games. it'll be useful for movies and documentaries if they weren't "flat". And really only useful for solo experience with them. TVs are large enough and cheap enough that with the lights dimmed you get a similar experience to a VR headset, but shared with others in the same room. I'm not totally sold on the virtual desktop concept, but I'd be willing to try it. But I, personally, benefit greatly from actual tactile feedback with paper and handwriting. A multi-sensory experience (touch, sight, smell, sound) is far better than a 1-2 sense experience (sight w/ maybe sound) for memory retention and recollection.
- codybrown 11y ago
  what VR dev kits have you tried? the HTC Vive and Oculus don't come out until next month.
- justaman 11y ago
  I don't want to feel like there is a brick strapped to my head.
ebbv 11y ago
If I was running Apple I wouldn't be wasting my money going into VR either. It's nothing but hype right now, and frankly I don't see it going much beyond that with any of the products that are on the horizon.
PinguTS 11y ago
VR has its use cases. But the question is, will it be like 3D for mass market? Everybody praised 3D when it started a few years back. But now 3D seems to be dead, with the few exceptions like movie cinemas. Even most of the TV manufacturers seems to get rid of it. So what about VR? Only a hype by the tech savvy community and the lost and forgotten in a few years when it should be ready for mass market?
- mrtron 11y ago
  3D was never really there as a technology, it was pseudo-3D. VR tech is actually quite impressive, and as a result people will figure out how to apply it to humans.
- ld00d 11y ago
  I think it's very much like 3D and will fail to be a wide commercial success for the same reasons. -With standard 2D monitors, nobody has to wear equipment on their heads. -People have physical reactions to 3D/VR that they don't normally have in a 2D monitor. -3D/VR requires each participant to have their own set of gear. I think there's a lot of hype because many gamers are really excited the technology, and because we don't have any other up-and-coming tech to latch onto these days.
- mattnewport 11y ago
  Have you tried any of the consumer VR headsets? My experience is that nobody makes the comparison with 3D TV any more after trying high end VR.
  - berberous 11y ago
    Seriously, was anyone ever hyped on 3D TVs? It always felt like a marketing push. I don't know a single person that was ever excited by it. Whereas the excitement from people who have tried VR is palpable.
    - mattnewport 11y ago
      Yeah, speaking for myself I was never excited by 3D TV or movies but I quit my job to work full time on VR because I'm so excited about the possibilities. Game developers can be a pretty cynical bunch. I worked with a lot of seasoned devs who were totally blase about getting an Xbox One or PS4 on their desk years before they launched but were genuinely excited even by the DK1.
jballanc 11y ago
Does no one remember the Eee PC? The whole "netbook" craze? It was at least 2-3 years that each quarterly earnings call some analyst would ask, like clockwork, why Apple was letting the netbook market get away from them. Officially, the answer that Apple repeatedly gave was that they "weren't impressed with any of the current offerings" and that they would not "rush to market with a product we're not proud of" (not exact quotes, but probably close enough). The unspoken truth of the matter was that the margins on existing netbooks were razor thin. When Apple finally did introduce the MacBook Air, it was more powerful and with better economics than anything else on the market by far. The Eee PC was discontinued in 2013. The MacBook Air (and now MacBook) are still going strong today. Of course, this shouldn't be a surprise, Apple did the exact same thing with the MP3 player. I suspect that something similar is going on with VR (and a whole host of other technologies). Until the first products hit the market and Apple has a sense for how the price/features/demand equation balances out, they'll be more than happy to sit on the sidelines. So no, I don't think there is a skunkworks team fashioning an end-to-end solution. This isn't about Apple not wanting to accommodate third party parts/devices. It's about building something that is good and makes money.
- codybrown 11y ago
  There's a big difference between Apple making their own VR hardware and shipping a computer with a fast enough GPU to run other VR hardware (or ability to have a fast enough GPU via something like the Razer Core). The latter would be necessary for Apple in the growing VR ecosystem but it could be great for many other areas that require an intensive GPU. And that's the argument of the piece.
  - jballanc 11y ago
    Apple's target customer doesn't need a graphics card to do anything more demanding than video editing. It's been probably at least 7 years since you could get a Mac with anything like a top-of-the-line graphics card. Are there potential customers that Apple is not grabbing by not having a high-end graphics option? Sure! But Apple doesn't care... The thing about Apple is that, unlike almost all of their competitors, they really don't care about a "Mac in every home". They'd much rather target specific slices of the market where they can excel and make a lot of money (think BMW, not Ford).
codybrown 11y ago
Don't know if this comment will make a difference but its worth saying, before you make a comment here, to mention some context on what VR hardware you've tried. I've tried the consumer Oculus, the HTC Vive, and the Hololens.
mikhailt 11y ago
The article doesn't go into details as to why Apple should be doing anything with VR that isn't a) a proven technology nor is it b) anything more than a fad. I've heard of the same thing being said about 3D TV, it quickly died a few years. I have a 3d Projector but never used it. I've tried a few 3D movies but prefer the standard vision. In addition, we went through the VR fed back in the 90s, just like 3D TV, it died out after a few years. Google Glass itself died out very quickly as well. I have zero intentions of wearing a VR headset all day long, so this is ruled out for general computations. Gaming? I've stopped gaming many years ago. So, what is the purpose of VR or even AR for me? The one single benefit that could convince me to wear an AR glass (Google Glass style) all day long if it comes with closed captioning support for real life, that to me as a hard of hearing person would provide so much benefits.
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  >The article doesn't go into details as to why Apple should be doing anything with VR that isn't a) a proven technology nor is it b) anything more than a fad. You could say the same about cars, but Apple is supposedly working on building one. The same could be said about watches before the Apple Watch was released too. I agree with your point, but I'm just playing devil's advocate.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    Cars and watches are definitely proven technologies and not fads.
    - DanGarcia595 11y ago
      I would say that smart watches are still a fad.
    - bsbechtel 11y ago
      Electric/self-driving cars are not proven technologies.
- codybrown 11y ago
muglug 11y ago
I just bought my first Windows PC in 13 years to power a VR headset. And after removing all the unnecessary HP crapware, driver installation headaches and navigating the weird hybrid UI, I was reminded of how much I haven't missed.
mattnewport 11y ago
It also doesn't help Apple's VR prospects that many VR developers are coming from games, even if they aren't working on gaming VR applications, and from high end 3D games in particular because of the skill set overlap. Apple has never really embraced games and particularly not high end desktop games and my experience at a major AAA game developer (I'm now a freelance VR dev) was that Apple was by far the worst partner to work with of any of the platform holders (and we worked with pretty much all of them). Apple gets a lot less love overall from game developers than from web developers because they don't appear to care about games and don't give the kind of developer support game devs are used to from other platform holders and hardware companies. Even if they were to announce something in the VR space it would take a lot of changes to their approach for that to change I feel.
tangue 11y ago
Apple created Quicktime VR before sunsetting it, in a sense they pioneered VR
- berberous 11y ago
  Here's Apple's homepage from 1997 [0]: "MOVIES FROM MARS: QuickTime VR takes you out of this world" [0] https://web.archive.org/web/19970715124703/http://www.apple.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19970715124703/http://www.apple....
nilkn 11y ago
I'm really surprised at how much skepticism there is here towards VR. I have a feeling a large majority of the commenters here have simply never tried the latest offerings and/or are not up-to-date on where the field is. The consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are both very good. In particular, Oculus has very much already taken the Apple approach to VR. The final Rift has a high-end, premium design, including a lot of quality-of-life enhancements that feel like they came straight from Steve Jobs, like an obsession with making the cable as thin and lightweight as possible. Oculus is pushing hard for a completely vertically integrated product. They're designing the software and the hardware specifically for each other and aren't very interested in supporting anything outside their ecosystem. They're having developers produce titles specifically for the Rift to maximize the quality of the user's experience. Even the box they're shipping the Rift in is premium: http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/box1.jpg http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/box1.jpg The Touch motion controllers, expected to ship later this year, are similarly premium, and they don't just track their own locations in space but also offer basic finger and gesture recognition. They also have a small, lightweight design, enabling fine interactions with virtual objects. Frankly, I can't think of what Apple could bring to this space even if they tried. Oculus has already done all the classic things that Apple does, and Apple is extremely inexperienced with game development. With regard to the HTC Vive, I would argue that it's a little less polished and premium than the Rift, but it's also the first mover for fully tracked motion controllers, so I regard it as one of the most innovative products of the last five years. It's highly unlikely Apple is going to find a way to be more innovative, and even then by the time they enter the market the Vive and Rift will have moved on and both will be equally premium by that point. IMHO, Apple has absolutely no chance in VR outside of smartphones, because Oculus has already played all of Apple's traditional tricks and Apple has no experience with games. Mobile VR is an area where they might excel, though the screens in the current iPhones are not nearly good enough to compete with the S7 and Gear VR, so at the very least they'd need to design future iPhone screens with VR in mind. This would mean both increasing the resolution and trying to maximize the pixel fill ratio. Then there's the problem of positionally and wirelessly tracking the smartphone user's location in 3D space, a problem that Oculus and Google are already tackling. Google has Project Tango and Oculus has John Carmack working on this problem. Once they achieve this goal, Apple will be even further behind with even smartphone VR.
greenspot 11y ago
I still do not see any significant added value from VR except a bit higher immersion at the cost of more head movement. But the head movement will be limited, nobody wants to do 180-360 degree turns in their living room and walk around. The key of video games is to sit and barely move and still be able to control a muscle packed fighter or whatever. Looking around can be fun but at the end I will do only small 5-20 degree turns (left , right, up, down) and then a big screen creates a similar level of immersion with no movement required. Maybe we haven't find the killer use case yet but I assume it will be like with 3D screens, the added value of a 3D screen to a normal screen is so small that nobody will care.
codybrown 11y ago
How did this post drop from the front page to the 7th page in less than a few minutes?
- wmil 11y ago
  I don't know the specifics of the algorithm that HN uses, but reddit used to factor in 'post velocity'. Assuming HN does something similar then a relatively small number of quick early upvotes can send something to the front page. A more mixed response from front page only viewers will send it crashing down.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  There are a lot more comments than there are upvotes to the article. The HN algorithm appears to penalize that heavily. There seems to be a cliff at about 40 comments: if you hit 40 comments before 40 upvotes, it falls off the front page.
djrogers 11y ago
On Oct 22nd, 2001 Apple was asleep at the wheel with MP3 players. On June 28th 2007, Apple was asleep at the wheel with smartphones. On January 26th, 2010, Apple was asleep at the wheel with tablets. I'm not trying to claim Apple is definitely in VR, but if you don't know by now that Apple is committed to not announcing products that aren't ready to show/sell, then you haven't been paying attention. *edit formatting
BuckRogers 11y ago
Myopic article and bad clickbait where the author doesn't attempt to think big at all. How do you know they're sleeping at the wheel? Because they haven't enabled OSX VR? I don't believe that console/PC VR will be the VR that makes it in the end. Small tablet (mobile phone) VR is where it will land and reach massive success. The industry needs to keep the phone upgrade cycle working, people already reduced their reliance on their PC and laptop with their phones. Samsung is nailing it with GearVR. High res, high powered phones are going to iterate until people simply put their phone in a $100 headset and experience VR that way. It'll be cheap to become a social experience, watching sports in 3D and as much gaming as people will want in that mode.
minalecs 11y ago
As someone that works in the VR industry where I think Apple can make the biggest difference would be in the self contained headset using their mobile components. Google is reportedly already doing this, http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/google-is-reportedly-building-a-standalone-vr-headset-not-powered-by-a-pc-or-smartphone/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/google-is-reportedly-buildi.... Think something like the Samsung Gear but an all in one headset thats nicely designed. Out of all the current available headsets, I think the PS is the best designed and best fitting. I think Apple could do better.

29 points by codybrown 11y ago

Personally I don't care much for VR in general. It's more like the new opium for the masses once it's affordable. While VR promotes escaping in virtual realities (hence, the name), Apple is looking for ways to improve your actual world with it's products (no marketing intended). This is where AR will matter, not VR. Google kinda pioneered here with Glass, Apple gave it a shot with it's wearable devive (watch), and I'm super excited what will come next! Alone glasses that don't suck visually (people shouldn't notice the difference from a distance) and an all-day-battery-life would be features I'd spend $1000 upwards on, just because.

scient 11y ago
How does it feel being such an Apple fanboy? :)
calgoo 11y ago
I agree, im really looking forward to AR systems. They are just so much more useful then VR. Sure, VR has its places like gaming, movies, documentaries etc. but AR is something that could be implemented in our daily lifes to really enhance them. The social network could actually extend into the real world.
Oletros 11y ago
How is the Apple Watch an AR device?

Mithaldu 11y ago

Apple doesn't innovate. It combines proven technologies into polished products. When VR has proven itself, with R&D investments of other companies, Apple will release a near-perfect refinement of all things VR and everyone will hail them as the savior who brought VR to the world.

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
Apple won't have pornography. This will kill their VR ambitions.
- xemoka 11y ago
  Because pornography hasn't found any way to be available on Apple platforms?
BuckRogers 11y ago
Yes, that's what Microsoft used to do. As odd as it sounds because that doesn't 'sound' like leadership to those who don't understand how technology and science works as iterative processes. That was when they were the de facto industry leader for decades. Now Apple is that leader. It's not a slight to say Apple is the new Microsoft. It's a massive accomplishment to have taken the mantle of the tech industry leader that everyone looks to. Everyone, whether it's on top of love, hate or indifference, wants to comment on Apple. That's how you know you've won (the money probably doesn't hurt either).
vlunkr 11y ago
> It combines proven technologies into polished products. Is that not innovation? Maybe technically the iPhone was just a combination of existing technologies, but it went above and beyond them to the point that it was essentially new.
- dave2000 11y ago
  No, it's marketing more than innovation.
  - allsystemsgo 11y ago
    I'm sure their hardware engineers would beg to differ.
    - secstate 11y ago

Cshelton 11y ago

Note: Have not read article, going from title. Apple is usually not a first to market type. They are a first to market with an amazing, polished, product type. They'll wait to see what gets proved in the market and what doesn't.

smt88 11y ago
> They are a first to market with an amazing, polished, product type That hasn't been true for a long time. The iPad might have been the last product fitting that description, and it was released in 2010.
- simonh 11y ago
  Not the Apple watch, which is selling faster than the iPhone or iPad were at this point after launch and has captured ~70% of the smart watch market? Ok, 'amazing' and 'polished' are aesthetic judgements on which reasonable people can disagree. How much better would it have to do to count, in your opinion?
  - smt88 11y ago
    The iPod, iPhone, and iPad redefined (you might even say created) their categories. People have argued that tablets are fairly useless in the end, but the iPad still made tablets mainstream and is arguably still the best tablet. The watch did none of those things. I saw lukewarm reviews at best, and I've never met anyone who raved about having one. Capturing 70+% of the smart watch market is probably more a function of demographics, since a smart watch is a huge luxury, than of the quality of the product. How much better would Apple have to do? It would have to make smart watches mainstream. For VR, it would have to make VR mainstream. That's the bar that they set in the past. (Note that I despise Apple and am certainly not just being nostalgic.)

bryanlarsen 11y ago

"I’m willing to bet there is a high stress team in the basement of Apple working on an End to End VR solution but it could be years before it sees the light of day." Sure, that sucks for developers and us on the bleeding edge, but it doesn't hurt Apple one bit. At the most optimistic, it'll take 2-3 years for VR to become mainstream, and as long as Apple comes out with a polished Apple-like solution by then, they won't miss out on the market. If their offering is compelling then content will be ported to it. If they wait much longer than 2-3 years competing solutions may achieve critical mass. At this point, releasing any solution before nVidia's Pascal and/or AMD's Arctic Islands is available would be just silly. Maybe we'll see something in September.

Loque 11y ago

VR is not yet 'here' and is not currently delivering, but it is promising a lot. The form factor alone has challenges which the public will not be willing to sacrifice for the experience, which could turn out to be mostly a gimmick. Some things people don't think about; -) looking at your keyboard/input device whilst wearing a VR headset -) being the same room as other people for prolonged periods of time with a headset -) sharing experiences with other people close to you -) what are you going to experience on VR, that needs VR so bad? Who is going to pay/develop and what is this content going to be... can it actually deliver, making good immersive software is incredibly hard. -) and then cost...

notjustanymike 11y ago
What are you going to experience on VR, that needs VR so bad? Elite: Dangerous. DiRT Rally. Minecraft. Movies, and interestingly, documentaries. These are all currently available. Further down the line, VR will replace multi-screen setups. As a developer I'm very excited to code in a VR IDE.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  It'll be great for video games. it'll be useful for movies and documentaries if they weren't "flat". And really only useful for solo experience with them. TVs are large enough and cheap enough that with the lights dimmed you get a similar experience to a VR headset, but shared with others in the same room. I'm not totally sold on the virtual desktop concept, but I'd be willing to try it. But I, personally, benefit greatly from actual tactile feedback with paper and handwriting. A multi-sensory experience (touch, sight, smell, sound) is far better than a 1-2 sense experience (sight w/ maybe sound) for memory retention and recollection.
codybrown 11y ago
what VR dev kits have you tried? the HTC Vive and Oculus don't come out until next month.
justaman 11y ago
I don't want to feel like there is a brick strapped to my head.

ebbv 11y ago

If I was running Apple I wouldn't be wasting my money going into VR either. It's nothing but hype right now, and frankly I don't see it going much beyond that with any of the products that are on the horizon.

PinguTS 11y ago

VR has its use cases. But the question is, will it be like 3D for mass market? Everybody praised 3D when it started a few years back. But now 3D seems to be dead, with the few exceptions like movie cinemas. Even most of the TV manufacturers seems to get rid of it. So what about VR? Only a hype by the tech savvy community and the lost and forgotten in a few years when it should be ready for mass market?

mrtron 11y ago
3D was never really there as a technology, it was pseudo-3D. VR tech is actually quite impressive, and as a result people will figure out how to apply it to humans.
ld00d 11y ago
I think it's very much like 3D and will fail to be a wide commercial success for the same reasons. -With standard 2D monitors, nobody has to wear equipment on their heads. -People have physical reactions to 3D/VR that they don't normally have in a 2D monitor. -3D/VR requires each participant to have their own set of gear. I think there's a lot of hype because many gamers are really excited the technology, and because we don't have any other up-and-coming tech to latch onto these days.
mattnewport 11y ago
Have you tried any of the consumer VR headsets? My experience is that nobody makes the comparison with 3D TV any more after trying high end VR.
- berberous 11y ago
  Seriously, was anyone ever hyped on 3D TVs? It always felt like a marketing push. I don't know a single person that was ever excited by it. Whereas the excitement from people who have tried VR is palpable.
  - mattnewport 11y ago
    Yeah, speaking for myself I was never excited by 3D TV or movies but I quit my job to work full time on VR because I'm so excited about the possibilities. Game developers can be a pretty cynical bunch. I worked with a lot of seasoned devs who were totally blase about getting an Xbox One or PS4 on their desk years before they launched but were genuinely excited even by the DK1.

jballanc 11y ago

Does no one remember the Eee PC? The whole "netbook" craze? It was at least 2-3 years that each quarterly earnings call some analyst would ask, like clockwork, why Apple was letting the netbook market get away from them. Officially, the answer that Apple repeatedly gave was that they "weren't impressed with any of the current offerings" and that they would not "rush to market with a product we're not proud of" (not exact quotes, but probably close enough). The unspoken truth of the matter was that the margins on existing netbooks were razor thin. When Apple finally did introduce the MacBook Air, it was more powerful and with better economics than anything else on the market by far. The Eee PC was discontinued in 2013. The MacBook Air (and now MacBook) are still going strong today. Of course, this shouldn't be a surprise, Apple did the exact same thing with the MP3 player. I suspect that something similar is going on with VR (and a whole host of other technologies). Until the first products hit the market and Apple has a sense for how the price/features/demand equation balances out, they'll be more than happy to sit on the sidelines. So no, I don't think there is a skunkworks team fashioning an end-to-end solution. This isn't about Apple not wanting to accommodate third party parts/devices. It's about building something that is good and makes money.

codybrown 11y ago
There's a big difference between Apple making their own VR hardware and shipping a computer with a fast enough GPU to run other VR hardware (or ability to have a fast enough GPU via something like the Razer Core). The latter would be necessary for Apple in the growing VR ecosystem but it could be great for many other areas that require an intensive GPU. And that's the argument of the piece.
- jballanc 11y ago
  Apple's target customer doesn't need a graphics card to do anything more demanding than video editing. It's been probably at least 7 years since you could get a Mac with anything like a top-of-the-line graphics card. Are there potential customers that Apple is not grabbing by not having a high-end graphics option? Sure! But Apple doesn't care... The thing about Apple is that, unlike almost all of their competitors, they really don't care about a "Mac in every home". They'd much rather target specific slices of the market where they can excel and make a lot of money (think BMW, not Ford).

codybrown 11y ago

Don't know if this comment will make a difference but its worth saying, before you make a comment here, to mention some context on what VR hardware you've tried. I've tried the consumer Oculus, the HTC Vive, and the Hololens.

mikhailt 11y ago

The article doesn't go into details as to why Apple should be doing anything with VR that isn't a) a proven technology nor is it b) anything more than a fad. I've heard of the same thing being said about 3D TV, it quickly died a few years. I have a 3d Projector but never used it. I've tried a few 3D movies but prefer the standard vision. In addition, we went through the VR fed back in the 90s, just like 3D TV, it died out after a few years. Google Glass itself died out very quickly as well. I have zero intentions of wearing a VR headset all day long, so this is ruled out for general computations. Gaming? I've stopped gaming many years ago. So, what is the purpose of VR or even AR for me? The one single benefit that could convince me to wear an AR glass (Google Glass style) all day long if it comes with closed captioning support for real life, that to me as a hard of hearing person would provide so much benefits.

bsbechtel 11y ago
>The article doesn't go into details as to why Apple should be doing anything with VR that isn't a) a proven technology nor is it b) anything more than a fad. You could say the same about cars, but Apple is supposedly working on building one. The same could be said about watches before the Apple Watch was released too. I agree with your point, but I'm just playing devil's advocate.
- pessimizer 11y ago
  Cars and watches are definitely proven technologies and not fads.
  - DanGarcia595 11y ago
    I would say that smart watches are still a fad.
  - bsbechtel 11y ago
    Electric/self-driving cars are not proven technologies.
codybrown 11y ago

muglug 11y ago

I just bought my first Windows PC in 13 years to power a VR headset. And after removing all the unnecessary HP crapware, driver installation headaches and navigating the weird hybrid UI, I was reminded of how much I haven't missed.

mattnewport 11y ago

It also doesn't help Apple's VR prospects that many VR developers are coming from games, even if they aren't working on gaming VR applications, and from high end 3D games in particular because of the skill set overlap. Apple has never really embraced games and particularly not high end desktop games and my experience at a major AAA game developer (I'm now a freelance VR dev) was that Apple was by far the worst partner to work with of any of the platform holders (and we worked with pretty much all of them). Apple gets a lot less love overall from game developers than from web developers because they don't appear to care about games and don't give the kind of developer support game devs are used to from other platform holders and hardware companies. Even if they were to announce something in the VR space it would take a lot of changes to their approach for that to change I feel.

tangue 11y ago

Apple created Quicktime VR before sunsetting it, in a sense they pioneered VR

berberous 11y ago
Here's Apple's homepage from 1997 [0]: "MOVIES FROM MARS: QuickTime VR takes you out of this world" [0] https://web.archive.org/web/19970715124703/http://www.apple.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19970715124703/http://www.apple....

nilkn 11y ago

I'm really surprised at how much skepticism there is here towards VR. I have a feeling a large majority of the commenters here have simply never tried the latest offerings and/or are not up-to-date on where the field is. The consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are both very good. In particular, Oculus has very much already taken the Apple approach to VR. The final Rift has a high-end, premium design, including a lot of quality-of-life enhancements that feel like they came straight from Steve Jobs, like an obsession with making the cable as thin and lightweight as possible. Oculus is pushing hard for a completely vertically integrated product. They're designing the software and the hardware specifically for each other and aren't very interested in supporting anything outside their ecosystem. They're having developers produce titles specifically for the Rift to maximize the quality of the user's experience. Even the box they're shipping the Rift in is premium: http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/box1.jpg http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/box1.jpg The Touch motion controllers, expected to ship later this year, are similarly premium, and they don't just track their own locations in space but also offer basic finger and gesture recognition. They also have a small, lightweight design, enabling fine interactions with virtual objects. Frankly, I can't think of what Apple could bring to this space even if they tried. Oculus has already done all the classic things that Apple does, and Apple is extremely inexperienced with game development. With regard to the HTC Vive, I would argue that it's a little less polished and premium than the Rift, but it's also the first mover for fully tracked motion controllers, so I regard it as one of the most innovative products of the last five years. It's highly unlikely Apple is going to find a way to be more innovative, and even then by the time they enter the market the Vive and Rift will have moved on and both will be equally premium by that point. IMHO, Apple has absolutely no chance in VR outside of smartphones, because Oculus has already played all of Apple's traditional tricks and Apple has no experience with games. Mobile VR is an area where they might excel, though the screens in the current iPhones are not nearly good enough to compete with the S7 and Gear VR, so at the very least they'd need to design future iPhone screens with VR in mind. This would mean both increasing the resolution and trying to maximize the pixel fill ratio. Then there's the problem of positionally and wirelessly tracking the smartphone user's location in 3D space, a problem that Oculus and Google are already tackling. Google has Project Tango and Oculus has John Carmack working on this problem. Once they achieve this goal, Apple will be even further behind with even smartphone VR.

greenspot 11y ago

I still do not see any significant added value from VR except a bit higher immersion at the cost of more head movement. But the head movement will be limited, nobody wants to do 180-360 degree turns in their living room and walk around. The key of video games is to sit and barely move and still be able to control a muscle packed fighter or whatever. Looking around can be fun but at the end I will do only small 5-20 degree turns (left , right, up, down) and then a big screen creates a similar level of immersion with no movement required. Maybe we haven't find the killer use case yet but I assume it will be like with 3D screens, the added value of a 3D screen to a normal screen is so small that nobody will care.

codybrown 11y ago

How did this post drop from the front page to the 7th page in less than a few minutes?

wmil 11y ago
I don't know the specifics of the algorithm that HN uses, but reddit used to factor in 'post velocity'. Assuming HN does something similar then a relatively small number of quick early upvotes can send something to the front page. A more mixed response from front page only viewers will send it crashing down.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
There are a lot more comments than there are upvotes to the article. The HN algorithm appears to penalize that heavily. There seems to be a cliff at about 40 comments: if you hit 40 comments before 40 upvotes, it falls off the front page.

djrogers 11y ago

On Oct 22nd, 2001 Apple was asleep at the wheel with MP3 players. On June 28th 2007, Apple was asleep at the wheel with smartphones. On January 26th, 2010, Apple was asleep at the wheel with tablets. I'm not trying to claim Apple is definitely in VR, but if you don't know by now that Apple is committed to not announcing products that aren't ready to show/sell, then you haven't been paying attention. *edit formatting

BuckRogers 11y ago

Myopic article and bad clickbait where the author doesn't attempt to think big at all. How do you know they're sleeping at the wheel? Because they haven't enabled OSX VR? I don't believe that console/PC VR will be the VR that makes it in the end. Small tablet (mobile phone) VR is where it will land and reach massive success. The industry needs to keep the phone upgrade cycle working, people already reduced their reliance on their PC and laptop with their phones. Samsung is nailing it with GearVR. High res, high powered phones are going to iterate until people simply put their phone in a $100 headset and experience VR that way. It'll be cheap to become a social experience, watching sports in 3D and as much gaming as people will want in that mode.

minalecs 11y ago

As someone that works in the VR industry where I think Apple can make the biggest difference would be in the self contained headset using their mobile components. Google is reportedly already doing this, http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/google-is-reportedly-building-a-standalone-vr-headset-not-powered-by-a-pc-or-smartphone/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/google-is-reportedly-buildi.... Think something like the Samsung Gear but an all in one headset thats nicely designed. Out of all the current available headsets, I think the PS is the best designed and best fitting. I think Apple could do better.