4 ms·

I was most surprised to find out that wearable displays haven't been a top front and center strategic priority from day 1, and instead they were thinking about

by xoa 4y ago

I was most surprised to find out that wearable displays haven't been a top front and center strategic priority from day 1, and instead they were thinking about the stupid ass car thing: >Apple CEO Tim Cook has been relatively hands-off from the product compared to others like the iPhone... The Information's sources say that Apple's mixed reality efforts began almost accidentally when the company purchased a German AR startup called Metaio to use some of its technology on Project Titan, its self-driving car project. Which is just wild and highly contrary to my expectations. It's been obvious for ages that, while quite a ways from hitting the tipping point, wearable displays are the natural next big disruption in the personal electronics space following in the steps of the PC, notebooks, smartphones and tablets. A retinal scanning display will be able to hit the limits of human visual acuity while also being portable, which completely obsoletes every single other display we use and has massive implications for a lot of our basic modes of interaction. Suddenly there is no connection between "screen size" and device, where you are etc, it's just a matter of tradeoffs with how much power is behind it. With an industry standard even embedded devices could have virtual "displays" with lots of info. If you think about the form factor of nearly everything portable we use, it's "a display, with stuff attached to it" (either attached to the back in the case of phones/tablets or on a hinge to a rectangle that otherwise matches the screen in the case of notebooks). The display bit almost completely defines the basics of how portable it is, how it's used, and the limits on thermal dissipation and roughly how much energy it can have. But a wearable display once again abstracts the human-computer visual interface part from everything else, which means single rectangles are no longer required. Belts, smoother ovoids that can be more easily pocketed, and who knows what else all become possible ways to hold enhanced computation/storage beyond what the wearable itself can do. And as someone enters LAN range (or sits down and plugs in even) of more computation power (in the form of a desktop computer say, or networked computers) there could be seamless switchover. And it's not as if this is 50 years in the future either, the pieces have been steadily coming together. Products like the RETISSA [0] demonstrate the potential that a company with Apple's resources could get to work polishing. The opening up of 6 GHz spectrum and WiFi 7+ along with a long awaited new shift in networking means LAN data rates are there too. To say there are implications for, oh, products like the iPhone, iPad, and Macbooks (or even iMacs) is a bit of an understatement. With enormous irony if anything Apple's heavily neglected desktop section might be one of the ones that'd best survive. But whomever gets it right and gets the ecosystem going has the potential to really mess up established players. Given how Apple accomplished multiple disruptions and has repeatedly stated they're alert to it and the importance of being willing to go after their own cash cows early before someone else does it, I'd sort of assumed in the background this was one of their key strategic projects even if it was like a 10 year one. It's fascinating to find that no, actually not! And Ive's influence without the leash of Jobs to make sure form and function stayed linked really seems to have been pretty toxic. Whatever Cooks' other strengths keeping that reigned in doesn't seem to have been one of them. I guess the forces of organizational inertia are always incredibly powerful. ---- 0: https://en.retissa.biz/ https://en.retissa.biz/

Bud 4y ago
64% of US adults wear eyeglasses. Heat exists. We're already basically at the limits of physics for making CPUs faster and heat dissipation is a huge issue even for products that you don't have pressed against your face and eyes all the time. Humans interact chiefly via sight. But it has still been "obvious for ages" that wearable displays are going to be some big inevitable hit? No it hasn't. And why on earth would Apple have made this tech a priority ten years before it was viable as a consumer product? P.S. No, Apple's desktop computer operation has not been "neglected" lately; they actually have been giving the Mac a lot of care and feeding, as evidenced by the really nice new MacBook Pro re-design, and the Mac Studio. The opposite of what you said is true.
- xoa 4y ago
  >64% of US adults wear eyeglasses. ??? I do too. What does this have to do with anything? The lens is irrelevant for something that projects right onto the retina (trivial to correct for). Hell, I'd love it for that reason alone, would be a huge improvement for my computer usage. >We're already basically at the limits of physics for making CPUs faster and heat dissipation is a huge issue even for products that you don't have pressed against your face and eyes all the time. Lol? Also that you think this is relevant either is kind of confusing. >Humans interact chiefly via sight. Yes, hence why wearable AR/VR displays are obvious. >But it has still been "obvious for ages" that wearable displays are going to be some big inevitable hit? No it hasn't. Yes, it has. >And why on earth would Apple have made this tech a priority ten years before it was viable as a consumer product? For the same reason they were thinking about the "iPad" and then "iPhone" (tablet consideration actually came first internally even though in 2004 it was redirected toward the phone first) long, long before it "viable as a consumer product" duh. You don't get out ahead of things by waiting until after your competitors do it to get started, you make it happen early with your own R&D. >No, Apple's desktop computer operation has not been "neglected" lately; they actually have been giving the Mac a lot of care and feeding, as evidenced by the really nice new MacBook Pro re-design, and the Mac Studio. This is just pathetic. You cite the MacBook Pro as support for desktop computers and consider just this last year as a trend. I've been using Apple systems since the late 80s. Desktop systems have absolutely been massively neglected in the last decade. The Mac Pro got updated TWICE in TWELVE YEARS (the first of which was total shit), and that was after Apple pushed it massively up market vs their reliable good tower. The Mac Mini also had multiple years of just being left to sit there. There was zero in between them except the AIOs. And we're not talking about big redesigns but just basic normal CPU updates and the like that every single other computer manufacturer on the planet does like clockwork as a matter of course. They might, maybe, be turning that around now but a single release does not make a trend. And that desktop systems were a distant last place in Apple's priorities vs iDevices or notebooks has been extremely obvious and is utterly uncontroversial since the 00s. That's just a statement of fact. In terms of raw income the balance shifted dramatically mid 2000s in favor of notebooks, and then of course later to iDevices. The Intel transition was driven primarily by the needs of the notebooks, not that everything else didn't come along for the ride. And Apple's corporate structure doesn't do multitasking boring stuff that well in exchange for doing single stuff incredibly well.

by xoa 4y ago

Bud 4y ago

64% of US adults wear eyeglasses. Heat exists. We're already basically at the limits of physics for making CPUs faster and heat dissipation is a huge issue even for products that you don't have pressed against your face and eyes all the time. Humans interact chiefly via sight. But it has still been "obvious for ages" that wearable displays are going to be some big inevitable hit? No it hasn't. And why on earth would Apple have made this tech a priority ten years before it was viable as a consumer product? P.S. No, Apple's desktop computer operation has not been "neglected" lately; they actually have been giving the Mac a lot of care and feeding, as evidenced by the really nice new MacBook Pro re-design, and the Mac Studio. The opposite of what you said is true.

xoa 4y ago
>64% of US adults wear eyeglasses. ??? I do too. What does this have to do with anything? The lens is irrelevant for something that projects right onto the retina (trivial to correct for). Hell, I'd love it for that reason alone, would be a huge improvement for my computer usage. >We're already basically at the limits of physics for making CPUs faster and heat dissipation is a huge issue even for products that you don't have pressed against your face and eyes all the time. Lol? Also that you think this is relevant either is kind of confusing. >Humans interact chiefly via sight. Yes, hence why wearable AR/VR displays are obvious. >But it has still been "obvious for ages" that wearable displays are going to be some big inevitable hit? No it hasn't. Yes, it has. >And why on earth would Apple have made this tech a priority ten years before it was viable as a consumer product? For the same reason they were thinking about the "iPad" and then "iPhone" (tablet consideration actually came first internally even though in 2004 it was redirected toward the phone first) long, long before it "viable as a consumer product" duh. You don't get out ahead of things by waiting until after your competitors do it to get started, you make it happen early with your own R&D. >No, Apple's desktop computer operation has not been "neglected" lately; they actually have been giving the Mac a lot of care and feeding, as evidenced by the really nice new MacBook Pro re-design, and the Mac Studio. This is just pathetic. You cite the MacBook Pro as support for desktop computers and consider just this last year as a trend. I've been using Apple systems since the late 80s. Desktop systems have absolutely been massively neglected in the last decade. The Mac Pro got updated TWICE in TWELVE YEARS (the first of which was total shit), and that was after Apple pushed it massively up market vs their reliable good tower. The Mac Mini also had multiple years of just being left to sit there. There was zero in between them except the AIOs. And we're not talking about big redesigns but just basic normal CPU updates and the like that every single other computer manufacturer on the planet does like clockwork as a matter of course. They might, maybe, be turning that around now but a single release does not make a trend. And that desktop systems were a distant last place in Apple's priorities vs iDevices or notebooks has been extremely obvious and is utterly uncontroversial since the 00s. That's just a statement of fact. In terms of raw income the balance shifted dramatically mid 2000s in favor of notebooks, and then of course later to iDevices. The Intel transition was driven primarily by the needs of the notebooks, not that everything else didn't come along for the ride. And Apple's corporate structure doesn't do multitasking boring stuff that well in exchange for doing single stuff incredibly well.