4 ms·

Are you living in a different timeline than me? Ever since the ipod came out people were salivating for the possibility of an iphone. Upon it's release the hyp

Are you living in a different timeline than me? Ever since the ipod came out people were salivating for the possibility of an iphone. Upon it's release the hype for it was incredible and had been building for years. Virtually everyone I know has a pair of non-airpod blue tooth headphones. Everyone had a walkman, then a discman, pre-ipod. Yea adoption of early mp3 players wasn't particularly high because they were not that great, but the same is true for the mini-disc (which I believe had even lower adoption). I still knew quite a few people that had pre-ipod mp3 players. Even among my gamer friends very, very few people have an Oculus. Everyone of the few people I knew who got an occulus (including myself) has had the exact same experience: First month, "wow this is a game changer!" second month, it's collecting dust. I know of literally no one who has used a VR headset weekly for a period longer than 3 months.

vel0city 4y ago
> Ever since the ipod came out people were salivating for the possibility of an iphone. And yet barely anyone bought the devices which were already on the market which could have filled that niche. Which yes, they existed, almost exclusively listened to music on bluetooth headphones through my phone before the iPhone released. Even streaming internet radio over a 3G connection before the non-3G iPhone was released. The market wasn't wanting a smartphone, they wanted specifically an iPod phone. Because, once again, Apple is great at making the general market want tech that roughly already exists, but just isn't very popular yet. > Yea adoption of early mp3 players wasn't particularly high because they were not that great There were good MP3 players on the market before the iPod came out, but they weren't very popular. There was a bit of a lack of ecosystem with them and a massive lack of marketing. I do agree there's not a large market for VR at the moment, and I agree its entirely possible there won't ever be a large market for it. I'm not saying its a given Apple will make a VR headset, I'm just arguing if they do it, it'll probably make a splash given their track record of releasing decently polished products with a good enough ecosystem to get the market to buy it. I don't think Apple would just dump a half-baked VR headset into the market.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > Even streaming internet radio over a 3G connection before the non-3G iPhone was released. The market wasn't wanting a smartphone, they wanted specifically an iPod phone. In the US, I was not even aware of mobile broadband availability before iPhone 3G. And whatever quality mobile internet was available, I assumed was very costly and metered. Some combination of the timing of iPhone 3G release coinciding with widespread deployment of 3G mobile broadband access and/or Apple negotiating ATT to provide unlimited data made it possible to have a little pocket computer that could stream whenever, wherever, however much you want. That was a game changer. A lot of the big tradeoffs that people had to make with smartphones before iPhone 3G disappeared to make it a very compelling product compared to its competitors.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > In the US, I was not even aware of mobile broadband availability before iPhone 3G. It was a $15/mo add-on to get up to 3Mbps unlimited data on my phone on AT&T in the US in 2006. 3G came out multiple years before the iPhone 3G. I had a pocket computer with unlimited data on AT&T the day people were buying the original iPhone.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Interesting, I was in my early 20s, and was not aware. Or maybe $15/month seemed like a lot back then. I just remember mobile companies charging nickel and diming for everything extra, so I never bothered to try and use anything that was not phone calls/SMS since those had been made unlimited and included in cheaper mobile plans.
      - vel0city 4y ago
        If you had seen it, good chance you would have shrugged it off. Most phone's WAP browsers sucked. You would have pretty much been paying $15/mo to read sports scores or delayed stock ticker quotes on most phones sold in the store. They definitely weren't expecting people to use the dumb phone internet connections for much data. I would buy unlocked GSM phones online and just pop my dumb phone SIM card into them. AT&T seemed to not recognize the IMEIs or at least wouldn't care that they weren't the cheap dumb phone on my plan. Then I'd have apps like Opera Mini and Google Maps. IMAP email would sync on the device without issue. internet instant messengers worked fine. I could stream music through m3u's. When the iPhone came out nothing about it seemed revolutionary to me, as I was a part of that niche market. Most consumers didn't even realize they could do those things on their phone, and for a lot of users it would be too complicated for them to even really consider it.

vel0city 4y ago

> Ever since the ipod came out people were salivating for the possibility of an iphone. And yet barely anyone bought the devices which were already on the market which could have filled that niche. Which yes, they existed, almost exclusively listened to music on bluetooth headphones through my phone before the iPhone released. Even streaming internet radio over a 3G connection before the non-3G iPhone was released. The market wasn't wanting a smartphone, they wanted specifically an iPod phone. Because, once again, Apple is great at making the general market want tech that roughly already exists, but just isn't very popular yet. > Yea adoption of early mp3 players wasn't particularly high because they were not that great There were good MP3 players on the market before the iPod came out, but they weren't very popular. There was a bit of a lack of ecosystem with them and a massive lack of marketing. I do agree there's not a large market for VR at the moment, and I agree its entirely possible there won't ever be a large market for it. I'm not saying its a given Apple will make a VR headset, I'm just arguing if they do it, it'll probably make a splash given their track record of releasing decently polished products with a good enough ecosystem to get the market to buy it. I don't think Apple would just dump a half-baked VR headset into the market.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
> Even streaming internet radio over a 3G connection before the non-3G iPhone was released. The market wasn't wanting a smartphone, they wanted specifically an iPod phone. In the US, I was not even aware of mobile broadband availability before iPhone 3G. And whatever quality mobile internet was available, I assumed was very costly and metered. Some combination of the timing of iPhone 3G release coinciding with widespread deployment of 3G mobile broadband access and/or Apple negotiating ATT to provide unlimited data made it possible to have a little pocket computer that could stream whenever, wherever, however much you want. That was a game changer. A lot of the big tradeoffs that people had to make with smartphones before iPhone 3G disappeared to make it a very compelling product compared to its competitors.
- vel0city 4y ago
  > In the US, I was not even aware of mobile broadband availability before iPhone 3G. It was a $15/mo add-on to get up to 3Mbps unlimited data on my phone on AT&T in the US in 2006. 3G came out multiple years before the iPhone 3G. I had a pocket computer with unlimited data on AT&T the day people were buying the original iPhone.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Interesting, I was in my early 20s, and was not aware. Or maybe $15/month seemed like a lot back then. I just remember mobile companies charging nickel and diming for everything extra, so I never bothered to try and use anything that was not phone calls/SMS since those had been made unlimited and included in cheaper mobile plans.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      If you had seen it, good chance you would have shrugged it off. Most phone's WAP browsers sucked. You would have pretty much been paying $15/mo to read sports scores or delayed stock ticker quotes on most phones sold in the store. They definitely weren't expecting people to use the dumb phone internet connections for much data. I would buy unlocked GSM phones online and just pop my dumb phone SIM card into them. AT&T seemed to not recognize the IMEIs or at least wouldn't care that they weren't the cheap dumb phone on my plan. Then I'd have apps like Opera Mini and Google Maps. IMAP email would sync on the device without issue. internet instant messengers worked fine. I could stream music through m3u's. When the iPhone came out nothing about it seemed revolutionary to me, as I was a part of that niche market. Most consumers didn't even realize they could do those things on their phone, and for a lot of users it would be too complicated for them to even really consider it.