7 ms·

I'm impressed by the ability of the press to take any new tech idea and spin that into Apple being the latent dark horse that will win the category. Off the to

by nxc18 10y ago

I'm impressed by the ability of the press to take any new tech idea and spin that into Apple being the latent dark horse that will win the category. Off the top of my head I can think of streaming TV, a physical TV set, AI, and self-driving cars. Is there any evidence Apple has any advantage over the already quite competent, well-funded players who have already demonstrated significant progress in this area?

jpalomaki 10y ago
One advantage could be the sales channel. Through Apple store they can easily get the products into the hand of customers. This might be quite valuable with products which you need to experience in order to understand them. Apple's share of mobile phone market can be helpful if they want to bring in functionality that requires special features from the handset. Also if we think about some more down to earth stuff, Apple could become "number one AR vendor" by just putting the features to next iPhone models. If the stuff actually works and if Apple allows, this might bring in 3rd party developers.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  Nope. Apple's biggest advantages were always a sensitivity to untapped consumer interest, and marketing genius to get consumers excited about products that integrated smoothly into their lives. The latter has certainly disappeared. See e.g. the stampede away from the Mac. For the former: it's debatable how much untapped consumer interest there is in AR. Glasses would work if they were slim and stylish. But if the motivation is to "beam content into the eyes of the user" and not to empower users to do non-gimmicky cool new things they couldn't before - that's not going to happen. It's the difference between a power tool approach and a menu approach. If you give people power tools and let them play with them, they'll do amazing things. If you give people a menu of options - tweak a photo, tweak a photo a different way, take a 180 degree panorama, passively watch a VR movie - that's extremely unexciting. Cook has always been more of the latter type than the former.
  - eastWestMath 10y ago
    "Stampede away from the mac" is a complete overstatement, Apple still makes the most profits of any computer manufacturer.
    - collyw 10y ago
      Agreed. There is a lot of ranting in the tech community, but for your average user they seem as popular as ever.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
saycheese 10y ago
AR will become mainstream at the point people see it as the norm in public. Apple's core advantage is that they set the standard for mobile smart devices and consumer will follow them if they're able to gain momentum. Question at that point swings back to how they'll try to do it, which becomes highly speculative. If I had to guess, they'll morph the iPhone to a AR device like the morphed the iPod to a phone; meaning the first step is to add AR to the iPhone and gain traction.
- shadowmint 10y ago
  > they'll morph the iPhone to a AR device ...eventually, maybe; probably after someone else has first. The technology backing this is the stuff that the kinect was based on, by PrimeSense; it's for 3d spatial scanning, and it's super cool tech, but it's no more 'AR' than the kinect was or the leap motion was; turns out that even if you have a point cloud, AR is still hard. The sad thing is that there's no sign that Apple is actually building any kind of meaningful product with it. Any kind of competitive advantage Apple might have as a company hinges on them actually building something novel and meaningful in this space. I know they like to be all ninja and secret with their R&D, but you can't just hide in a closet for 6 months with a million dollars and pull out a strong AI; that sort of technological leap just doesn't happen very much any more, and certainly not without a lot of people noticing the massive amount of money it consumes to produce.
  - saycheese 10y ago
    Being first is irrelevant when it comes to being mainstream. Apple's iPod was not the first mobile digital music player, nor was the iPhone the first smartphone. Being novel also isn't that important. For example, Apple's white earphones played a major role in getting the public to see that their devices were mainstream, but there was nothing truly novel about them.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      Being first may be irrelevant, but if you're never first then someone else has to come up with the tech first. I believe parent comments are mostly making the point that we still have another generation before Apple would have anything sufficiently advanced enough that they could do their post-90s "polish and package" magic.
justaman 10y ago
Their idea of AR's use is... novel. I cant see myself wanting to "turn someone's head" in AR/VR. Can I get a Siri that can actually answer my questions instead of "Here's what I found on the web for that" ....
Pigo 10y ago
As someone who's already built several prototypes for the HoloLens, marketed for the Air Force, I also find this kind of humorous.
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  .....Continue please..... :-)
  - Pigo 10y ago
    We've purchased a few, and wanted to develop practical applications for someone in the field looking up materials and conversing with support. The truth is the new Skype beta is already a lot better than the things we've built. It's actually pretty sweet, because even the person who's not on the device can see what the person on it sees and can place holograms and access shared files and such. I don't think it's geared towards interaction. You can connect any bluetooth device to it, because it's just a Windows 10 machine, but it seems unreasonable to expect the user to be sitting down with keyboard and mouse or to assume they have some kind of gyroscopic mouse. There are some cool games that show what's possible, but data visualization seems to be a huge possibility. At least until they standardize more forms of input.
pvg 10y ago
The advantage is the same - integrated ecosystem of products they have strong control over and brand recognition. That's why this story pops up about everything, whether it's true or not or whether Apple can actually leverage the advantage. Also, aren't dark horses inherently latent?
hyperpallium 10y ago
Apple can make fashionable stuff, which headgear/glasses are, much more so than phones or watches. Few good engineering firms can. e.g. Consider the publicity shots for VR. As fashion, they are self-parody. Though IMHO key is heads-up display only - ie no creeping camera. This subtraction destroys AR, and so much related value... it's something a google could never bring itself to do. But Apple has demonstrated time and again that they will omit so-called "crucial" features if they undermine the offering. Another fairly rare strength...
- hellofunk 10y ago
  > Apple can make fashionable stuff Got to be honest, I think they missed a big opportunity to make the watch fashionable and popular by simply choosing a square face, reminiscent of nerdy calculator watches from decades past, rather than a nice circular face, like most other watches. Most people won't get an Apple Watch not because it isn't useful, but (I think) because it just doesn't look right, doesn't fit into the "fashion" that it claims to be.
  - dagw 10y ago
    Most people won't get an Apple Watch not because it isn't useful, but (I think) because it just doesn't look right, doesn't fit into the "fashion" that it claims to be. Apple's gamble seems to be targeting people whom have never owned or even wanted to own a traditional watch and for whom the traditional shape holds no intrinsic emotional value. Nor for that matter is square an unknown shape even for higher end watches: http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128b9dd6cd82e6f7bb5/master/w_400/tagheur-square-watches.jpg http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128b9dd6cd82e6f7bb5/master/w... http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128585fc86b2f2497c6/master/w_400/vacheron-square-watches.jpg http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128585fc86b2f2497c6/master/w...
    - Tenhundfeld 10y ago
      This is totally OT, but your first whom should be who. >Apple's gamble seems to be targeting people whom have never owned or even wanted to own a traditional watch... That should be who. People who have never owned... is the noun phrase acting as an object of targeting, and who is the subject of the modifying phrases who have never owned and [who] never even wanted to own. I'm not trying to be a pedant. By using whom, you're signaling that you care about grammar; so I thought I'd give feedback. Feel free to ignore.
dirtbox 10y ago
Apple are superb at introducing aging, but specialized tech to the mainstream masses.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
> I'm impressed by the ability of the press to take any new tech idea and spin that into Apple being the latent dark horse that will win the category. I'm not. Not everyone is up on new tech. But, there's probably only 5 people in developed nations that have not heard of Apple and that they are a big tech company. The goal here is ad revenue and for that, one needs clicks and for that, one needs Apple in the headline to reach more people.
Eridrus 10y ago
I have to say, this makes a whole lot more sense than an Apple car though, for which they have to start from square one on all the relevant parts.
awinder 10y ago
I want to contest that "streaming TV" currently encompasses quite competent players. DirecTV Now has been a dumpster fire of a rollout, Hulu is coming in late with a rather boutique offering, and none of these services offer some basic tablestakes features like greater-than-2-channel audio. Which, maybe I'm just overprivileged, but 5.1 audio is streamed over airwaves right now, and these guys can't figure out how to do it over the internet? Additionally theres tons of arcane pricing rules around how many streams an account can hold, weird DVR inplementation / rules around DVR, basically the kind of efficacy in solutions that existed for music before Apple came along and forced sanity into the market. I think this is easily an area that any number of players could really ratchet up & take, but not one solid reference implementation exists right now.
- JohnnyConatus 10y ago
  The lack of 5.1 support is not due to a lack of competence. It's due to the relatively small number of people who have a 5.1 setup. Basic product management.
  - awinder 10y ago
    Do you have marketshare numbers? I mean, soundbars would get an audio bump out of the upgrade, and theres egads of those sold. This is also "basic product management" until 1 competitor offers it, and then it becomes a wedge issue, so I'm not convinced that skipping table-stakes features is completely wise. It's also a wedge issue for people to subscribe to any of these services coming from OTA / Cable / Satellite, so if that's the competitive market place, again, I'm not sure it's a great product management decision.
  - izacus 10y ago
    What is this "small number"? A few millions of potential customers with (now rather cheapish) home cinema systems?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
collyw 10y ago
To be fair they did it with phones.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
already quite competent, well-funded players who have already demonstrated significant progress in this area? And who exactly would that be? In terms of HMD shipments Microsoft is the only one doing anything serious with AR and even the Hololens form factor, FOV, PPD, battery etc... are nowhere near ready for mainstream. I can only think of one "well funded" AR company and they aren't doing so hot. That's not to denigrate my brothers over at Meta, Avegant and others who are working hard on HMD and who we love. In sum total there has been just south of $5B of public investments or acquisitions into the AR development market since about 2014. Basically nothing when you consider what has to go into making the AR ecosystem work. In fact I don't know if people really understand what it's going to take to make consumer AR huge, which is why I wrote this handy guide[1]. My take is that Apple has the best shot because it bought Metaio (at the time the largest AR company in the world) for pennies a long time ago and absorbed all of the knowledge they had been building since 2003. The trick is whether Apple has figured out how to do a sleek, wide FOV HUD with SLAM, quality 3D rendering and a decent battery life - likely as an attachment to the iPhone. [1] https://virtualrealitypop.com/heres-what-it-s-going-to-take-for-augmented-reality-to-take-over-the-world-275db4aabe7#.pnj6l7dzt https://virtualrealitypop.com/heres-what-it-s-going-to-take-...
- intrasight 10y ago
  Exactly. While you could argue whether or not "significant progress" has been made, I don't think you can argue that success in AR is going to require an investment well beyond what any VC will be willing to cough up. Apple, with it huge stockpile of cash, can invest in long game instead of trying to satisfy an investor. What about Facebook and Google? They aren't hardware companies. As a content producer, I don't trust them to be a good technology partner for consumer products.
- Animats 10y ago
  The Microsoft Hololens integration and packaging is quite impressive. It's a full, self-contained AR system in reasonably lightweight self-contained headgear. The HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift are big, clunky devices with cables. If the Hololens could be brought down to a price point where the Pokemon Go crowd could use it, it would be a success for that alone. How good does AR need to be to do HyperReality?[1] Not much better than the HoloLens. More field of view would be needed. The ability to draw dark would be nice, but isn't essential for that, because it's explicitly a bright overlay on the world. [1] https://vimeo.com/166807261 https://vimeo.com/166807261
nsxwolf 10y ago
Apple can push AR onto their huge installed base of iPhones. People who have no idea what AR is will discover the feature and start using it. Only Apple and Google have an advantage like that.
wnevets 10y ago
I'm still waiting for the Apple TV set that jobs invented on his deathbed.
- mkhalil 10y ago
  I'm still waiting for the Apple TV to have gigibit ethernet. Its wireless is faster than its wired interface.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
No one is really responding to your question: > Is there any evidence Apple has any advantage over the already quite competent, well-funded players who have already demonstrated significant progress in this area? Yes. They obviously have world-class expertise in miniaturization, which is the key challenge for augmented reality glasses. They also just released last year their AirPods, which have a custom chip for delivering low latency wireless streams of audio. Video or light field is the next step, but AirPods are on the market which means Apple already has an MVP out. That's a huge advantage. The other key missing piece for any kind of mobile AR or VR is inside-out tracking. That, again, requires custom low-power silicon which is very much a strength for Apple. Compared to Google, Oculus, HTC, or any of the startups, Apple has much more experience with custom silicon. They acquired Metaio and Flyby, which build their machine vision base.

by nxc18 10y ago

jpalomaki 10y ago

One advantage could be the sales channel. Through Apple store they can easily get the products into the hand of customers. This might be quite valuable with products which you need to experience in order to understand them. Apple's share of mobile phone market can be helpful if they want to bring in functionality that requires special features from the handset. Also if we think about some more down to earth stuff, Apple could become "number one AR vendor" by just putting the features to next iPhone models. If the stuff actually works and if Apple allows, this might bring in 3rd party developers.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
Nope. Apple's biggest advantages were always a sensitivity to untapped consumer interest, and marketing genius to get consumers excited about products that integrated smoothly into their lives. The latter has certainly disappeared. See e.g. the stampede away from the Mac. For the former: it's debatable how much untapped consumer interest there is in AR. Glasses would work if they were slim and stylish. But if the motivation is to "beam content into the eyes of the user" and not to empower users to do non-gimmicky cool new things they couldn't before - that's not going to happen. It's the difference between a power tool approach and a menu approach. If you give people power tools and let them play with them, they'll do amazing things. If you give people a menu of options - tweak a photo, tweak a photo a different way, take a 180 degree panorama, passively watch a VR movie - that's extremely unexciting. Cook has always been more of the latter type than the former.
- eastWestMath 10y ago
  "Stampede away from the mac" is a complete overstatement, Apple still makes the most profits of any computer manufacturer.
  - collyw 10y ago
    Agreed. There is a lot of ranting in the tech community, but for your average user they seem as popular as ever.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

saycheese 10y ago

AR will become mainstream at the point people see it as the norm in public. Apple's core advantage is that they set the standard for mobile smart devices and consumer will follow them if they're able to gain momentum. Question at that point swings back to how they'll try to do it, which becomes highly speculative. If I had to guess, they'll morph the iPhone to a AR device like the morphed the iPod to a phone; meaning the first step is to add AR to the iPhone and gain traction.

shadowmint 10y ago
> they'll morph the iPhone to a AR device ...eventually, maybe; probably after someone else has first. The technology backing this is the stuff that the kinect was based on, by PrimeSense; it's for 3d spatial scanning, and it's super cool tech, but it's no more 'AR' than the kinect was or the leap motion was; turns out that even if you have a point cloud, AR is still hard. The sad thing is that there's no sign that Apple is actually building any kind of meaningful product with it. Any kind of competitive advantage Apple might have as a company hinges on them actually building something novel and meaningful in this space. I know they like to be all ninja and secret with their R&D, but you can't just hide in a closet for 6 months with a million dollars and pull out a strong AI; that sort of technological leap just doesn't happen very much any more, and certainly not without a lot of people noticing the massive amount of money it consumes to produce.
- saycheese 10y ago
  Being first is irrelevant when it comes to being mainstream. Apple's iPod was not the first mobile digital music player, nor was the iPhone the first smartphone. Being novel also isn't that important. For example, Apple's white earphones played a major role in getting the public to see that their devices were mainstream, but there was nothing truly novel about them.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    Being first may be irrelevant, but if you're never first then someone else has to come up with the tech first. I believe parent comments are mostly making the point that we still have another generation before Apple would have anything sufficiently advanced enough that they could do their post-90s "polish and package" magic.

justaman 10y ago

Their idea of AR's use is... novel. I cant see myself wanting to "turn someone's head" in AR/VR. Can I get a Siri that can actually answer my questions instead of "Here's what I found on the web for that" ....

Pigo 10y ago

As someone who's already built several prototypes for the HoloLens, marketed for the Air Force, I also find this kind of humorous.

Overtonwindow 10y ago
.....Continue please..... :-)
- Pigo 10y ago
  We've purchased a few, and wanted to develop practical applications for someone in the field looking up materials and conversing with support. The truth is the new Skype beta is already a lot better than the things we've built. It's actually pretty sweet, because even the person who's not on the device can see what the person on it sees and can place holograms and access shared files and such. I don't think it's geared towards interaction. You can connect any bluetooth device to it, because it's just a Windows 10 machine, but it seems unreasonable to expect the user to be sitting down with keyboard and mouse or to assume they have some kind of gyroscopic mouse. There are some cool games that show what's possible, but data visualization seems to be a huge possibility. At least until they standardize more forms of input.

pvg 10y ago

The advantage is the same - integrated ecosystem of products they have strong control over and brand recognition. That's why this story pops up about everything, whether it's true or not or whether Apple can actually leverage the advantage. Also, aren't dark horses inherently latent?

hyperpallium 10y ago

Apple can make fashionable stuff, which headgear/glasses are, much more so than phones or watches. Few good engineering firms can. e.g. Consider the publicity shots for VR. As fashion, they are self-parody. Though IMHO key is heads-up display only - ie no creeping camera. This subtraction destroys AR, and so much related value... it's something a google could never bring itself to do. But Apple has demonstrated time and again that they will omit so-called "crucial" features if they undermine the offering. Another fairly rare strength...

hellofunk 10y ago
> Apple can make fashionable stuff Got to be honest, I think they missed a big opportunity to make the watch fashionable and popular by simply choosing a square face, reminiscent of nerdy calculator watches from decades past, rather than a nice circular face, like most other watches. Most people won't get an Apple Watch not because it isn't useful, but (I think) because it just doesn't look right, doesn't fit into the "fashion" that it claims to be.
- dagw 10y ago
  Most people won't get an Apple Watch not because it isn't useful, but (I think) because it just doesn't look right, doesn't fit into the "fashion" that it claims to be. Apple's gamble seems to be targeting people whom have never owned or even wanted to own a traditional watch and for whom the traditional shape holds no intrinsic emotional value. Nor for that matter is square an unknown shape even for higher end watches: http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128b9dd6cd82e6f7bb5/master/w_400/tagheur-square-watches.jpg http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128b9dd6cd82e6f7bb5/master/w... http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128585fc86b2f2497c6/master/w_400/vacheron-square-watches.jpg http://media.gq.com/photos/56c61128585fc86b2f2497c6/master/w...
  - Tenhundfeld 10y ago
    This is totally OT, but your first whom should be who. >Apple's gamble seems to be targeting people whom have never owned or even wanted to own a traditional watch... That should be who. People who have never owned... is the noun phrase acting as an object of targeting, and who is the subject of the modifying phrases who have never owned and [who] never even wanted to own. I'm not trying to be a pedant. By using whom, you're signaling that you care about grammar; so I thought I'd give feedback. Feel free to ignore.

dirtbox 10y ago

Apple are superb at introducing aging, but specialized tech to the mainstream masses.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

> I'm impressed by the ability of the press to take any new tech idea and spin that into Apple being the latent dark horse that will win the category. I'm not. Not everyone is up on new tech. But, there's probably only 5 people in developed nations that have not heard of Apple and that they are a big tech company. The goal here is ad revenue and for that, one needs clicks and for that, one needs Apple in the headline to reach more people.

Eridrus 10y ago

I have to say, this makes a whole lot more sense than an Apple car though, for which they have to start from square one on all the relevant parts.

awinder 10y ago

I want to contest that "streaming TV" currently encompasses quite competent players. DirecTV Now has been a dumpster fire of a rollout, Hulu is coming in late with a rather boutique offering, and none of these services offer some basic tablestakes features like greater-than-2-channel audio. Which, maybe I'm just overprivileged, but 5.1 audio is streamed over airwaves right now, and these guys can't figure out how to do it over the internet? Additionally theres tons of arcane pricing rules around how many streams an account can hold, weird DVR inplementation / rules around DVR, basically the kind of efficacy in solutions that existed for music before Apple came along and forced sanity into the market. I think this is easily an area that any number of players could really ratchet up & take, but not one solid reference implementation exists right now.

JohnnyConatus 10y ago
The lack of 5.1 support is not due to a lack of competence. It's due to the relatively small number of people who have a 5.1 setup. Basic product management.
- awinder 10y ago
  Do you have marketshare numbers? I mean, soundbars would get an audio bump out of the upgrade, and theres egads of those sold. This is also "basic product management" until 1 competitor offers it, and then it becomes a wedge issue, so I'm not convinced that skipping table-stakes features is completely wise. It's also a wedge issue for people to subscribe to any of these services coming from OTA / Cable / Satellite, so if that's the competitive market place, again, I'm not sure it's a great product management decision.
- izacus 10y ago
  What is this "small number"? A few millions of potential customers with (now rather cheapish) home cinema systems?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

collyw 10y ago

To be fair they did it with phones.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

already quite competent, well-funded players who have already demonstrated significant progress in this area? And who exactly would that be? In terms of HMD shipments Microsoft is the only one doing anything serious with AR and even the Hololens form factor, FOV, PPD, battery etc... are nowhere near ready for mainstream. I can only think of one "well funded" AR company and they aren't doing so hot. That's not to denigrate my brothers over at Meta, Avegant and others who are working hard on HMD and who we love. In sum total there has been just south of $5B of public investments or acquisitions into the AR development market since about 2014. Basically nothing when you consider what has to go into making the AR ecosystem work. In fact I don't know if people really understand what it's going to take to make consumer AR huge, which is why I wrote this handy guide[1]. My take is that Apple has the best shot because it bought Metaio (at the time the largest AR company in the world) for pennies a long time ago and absorbed all of the knowledge they had been building since 2003. The trick is whether Apple has figured out how to do a sleek, wide FOV HUD with SLAM, quality 3D rendering and a decent battery life - likely as an attachment to the iPhone. [1] https://virtualrealitypop.com/heres-what-it-s-going-to-take-for-augmented-reality-to-take-over-the-world-275db4aabe7#.pnj6l7dzt https://virtualrealitypop.com/heres-what-it-s-going-to-take-...

intrasight 10y ago
Exactly. While you could argue whether or not "significant progress" has been made, I don't think you can argue that success in AR is going to require an investment well beyond what any VC will be willing to cough up. Apple, with it huge stockpile of cash, can invest in long game instead of trying to satisfy an investor. What about Facebook and Google? They aren't hardware companies. As a content producer, I don't trust them to be a good technology partner for consumer products.
Animats 10y ago
The Microsoft Hololens integration and packaging is quite impressive. It's a full, self-contained AR system in reasonably lightweight self-contained headgear. The HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift are big, clunky devices with cables. If the Hololens could be brought down to a price point where the Pokemon Go crowd could use it, it would be a success for that alone. How good does AR need to be to do HyperReality?[1] Not much better than the HoloLens. More field of view would be needed. The ability to draw dark would be nice, but isn't essential for that, because it's explicitly a bright overlay on the world. [1] https://vimeo.com/166807261 https://vimeo.com/166807261

nsxwolf 10y ago

Apple can push AR onto their huge installed base of iPhones. People who have no idea what AR is will discover the feature and start using it. Only Apple and Google have an advantage like that.

wnevets 10y ago

I'm still waiting for the Apple TV set that jobs invented on his deathbed.

mkhalil 10y ago
I'm still waiting for the Apple TV to have gigibit ethernet. Its wireless is faster than its wired interface.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

No one is really responding to your question: > Is there any evidence Apple has any advantage over the already quite competent, well-funded players who have already demonstrated significant progress in this area? Yes. They obviously have world-class expertise in miniaturization, which is the key challenge for augmented reality glasses. They also just released last year their AirPods, which have a custom chip for delivering low latency wireless streams of audio. Video or light field is the next step, but AirPods are on the market which means Apple already has an MVP out. That's a huge advantage. The other key missing piece for any kind of mobile AR or VR is inside-out tracking. That, again, requires custom low-power silicon which is very much a strength for Apple. Compared to Google, Oculus, HTC, or any of the startups, Apple has much more experience with custom silicon. They acquired Metaio and Flyby, which build their machine vision base.