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HoloLens is (soon to be was) a great AR device. Certainly useable and competent but it suffered from the same issue over and over: once the gee wiz demo was ove

HoloLens is (soon to be was) a great AR device. Certainly useable and competent but it suffered from the same issue over and over: once the gee wiz demo was over, outside of a few very niche uses, people went back to using their laptops and smartphones. Because it’s easier to just pull out your smartphone, get whatever you need done, then put it back in your pocket. This rapid and random access is why people love smartphones so much. With a headset, you either have to be wearing it all the time (something people aren’t willing to do; it’s like wearing sunglasses indoors no matter how good the waveguides are) or have to take the time to take a fragile headset out of its case, put it on your head, adjust to the complete take over of your field of view & environment, then figure out what you need to do using an input modality (be it voice, gestures, an input peripheral or some combination) that is far inferior to a touch interface for the 90% of tasks. People like to claim that AR is less intrusive than a smartphone but all the cases they present are carefully crafted demo’s. If you watch actual people use AR devices trying to accomplish some task you immediately notice that isn’t true at all. It will be interesting to see how Apple has addressed these problems but AR needs to be better at doing tasks average people can already do well with a smartphone, and like I mentioned you have an uphill battle due to the headset form factor alone.

randomifcpfan 4y ago
As I understand it, Apple is expected to only introduce a VR headset this year, like the new Sony VR headset or the high end Oculus. Apple’s AR headset is still many years away.
- p1esk 4y ago
  The article is about “mixed reality” headset, whatever that is.
  - sp332 4y ago
    Mixed reality can refer to both AR and VR, so it's actually less specific. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/discover/mixed-reality#the-mixed-reality-spectrum https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/disc...
    - kurthr 4y ago
      Apples definition of MR (Merged Reality) is "AR" (Augmented Reality) through cameras in a VR (Virtual Reality) interface. That means that it fully covers the eyes and can minimize the issues with outdoor lighting levels and precise alignment of projection over reality (If you move your head quickly AR will always be behind reality while camera images can be overlaid with minimal constant delay).
  - randomifcpfan 4y ago
    Mixed reality is a VR headset with cameras that pass through an approximation of outside reality. The hope is that gets you most of the vision benefits of AR. But you still get most of the physical drawbacks of VR. All the current high-end VR headsets have pass through cameras, of varying quality. It’s not clear yet whether Apple is bringing anything significantly new to the table. Will somewhat higher quality components make a significant difference?
dalbasal 4y ago
True, until it isn't. That is, once a device is useful or otherwise desirable enough... Issues like awkwardness or microefficiencies fade. I think the issue is that there's not enough to do in vr/ar. If we had a vr game of thrones, then everyone would be in vr watching it. If ar made some job much better, everyone doing that job would use one. The modern platform paradigm means all the speculative, creative investment is on the platform itself. "Creators" make the content. Well... The prizes for creating "content" are mediocre. A breakthrough filmmaker will have to make the VR's first blockbuster for the art... and so will their financiers. You can raise some money to make ar software, but the unicorn potential is slim compared to a platform play... the big bucks aren't available for such.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  If a family wants to watch game of thrones today, every one can gather around one TV screen and watch it using one person's account. I think Apple first needs to solve how to license a piece of media to one account that can be then be shared to anyone else in the same room, or a lot of families are never going to try it. The Nintendo DS blew me away with its "buy one game and let others download the multiplayer part for free" approach.
  - jclardy 4y ago
    Apple already built this in an underutilized iOS feature - SharePlay.
mdorazio 4y ago
Going to have to disagree with you. I tried Hololens 2 extensively and found it pretty bad. Terrible UI/UX, crappy field of view, muted colors, not-great resolution, and just not all that more useful than a VR headset with decent pass-through.
kmarc 4y ago
> Because it’s easier to just pull out your smartphone, get whatever you need done, then put it back in your pocket. FWIW I see an alarmingly lot of people glued to their phone while walking, in a restaurant, on the train, while driving, etc. Once it's normalized that they don't actually have to "pull out, put it back", just use (wear) it all the time as it is with phones, there will be a market.
- kredd 4y ago
  You still have some sort of spatial awareness while using a phone, which makes it more acceptable to use in public. Like, if I’m dining solo, and a waiter comes by, I will still acknowledge their existence and be able to respond to them, have an eye contact and be able to use your body language. That’s kind of lost in AR/VR case.
  - pitched 4y ago
    The headsets that exist today are very, very isolating. The whole idea behind them is to bring you somewhere else! To get AR right though, we need to be talking about something more like a projection like Google Glass. To bring the interface to you instead of bringing you to the interface means that pass-through must work when it’s powered off.
  - bredren 4y ago
    The Reality headset apparently addresses this with an external display that shows the user’s eyes. It seems hard to imagine how this could possibly be enough to satisfy the waiter scenario you’ve described. But my understanding is that it attempts to handle some version of this social need.
  - kmarc 4y ago
    Just to make a point, some of the aforementioned people are absolutely unaware of their surroundings, won't acknowledge the waiter's existence, nor have an eye contact with them, while they are on their phone. Immersive experience, that is. (note that I understand your point, just want to be sarcastic and bitter when I think about phone / AR-VR and other social media addicted people, who are eventually going to be the target audience of any of these new time wasters)
nabla9 4y ago
Apple addresses these issues by selling it to architects, engineers, designers, and other professionals who have an actual use case for the device. They sell million or less in year or two. This is simply too expensive to be a consumer device. There must be at least 5-6 years of iteration until it finds use on the mass market.
shostack 4y ago
Generally agree. Read Rainbow's End for an example of what reduced friction UI is like for AR. But it is enabled by input and display devices that are several generations ahead. Heck, even Cyberpunk 2077 is somewhat interesting in this regard. I started with a Corpo character and realized the persistent screen elements with a news ticker, some other data etc were interesting in a game world I knew nothing about. I imagine having extremely limited but immediately present text overlays would be exceptionally useful to replace my phone or watch if the device enabling it was of a sufficiently unassuming form factor that didn't take work to use. If Apple can give me the equivalent of what airpods did you headphones with cords but for smartphones, even if in an extremely limited capacity to just say, iMessage at first, that would be huge. Then give me a haptic ring I can fidget with that, when combined with a purpose built virtual keyboard, can do text entry, and that is a killer app IMHO.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Audio is the best and most natural AR experience right now. I would love to see greater investment here by Apple.

randomifcpfan 4y ago

As I understand it, Apple is expected to only introduce a VR headset this year, like the new Sony VR headset or the high end Oculus. Apple’s AR headset is still many years away.

p1esk 4y ago
The article is about “mixed reality” headset, whatever that is.
- sp332 4y ago
  Mixed reality can refer to both AR and VR, so it's actually less specific. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/discover/mixed-reality#the-mixed-reality-spectrum https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/disc...
  - kurthr 4y ago
    Apples definition of MR (Merged Reality) is "AR" (Augmented Reality) through cameras in a VR (Virtual Reality) interface. That means that it fully covers the eyes and can minimize the issues with outdoor lighting levels and precise alignment of projection over reality (If you move your head quickly AR will always be behind reality while camera images can be overlaid with minimal constant delay).
- randomifcpfan 4y ago
  Mixed reality is a VR headset with cameras that pass through an approximation of outside reality. The hope is that gets you most of the vision benefits of AR. But you still get most of the physical drawbacks of VR. All the current high-end VR headsets have pass through cameras, of varying quality. It’s not clear yet whether Apple is bringing anything significantly new to the table. Will somewhat higher quality components make a significant difference?

dalbasal 4y ago

True, until it isn't. That is, once a device is useful or otherwise desirable enough... Issues like awkwardness or microefficiencies fade. I think the issue is that there's not enough to do in vr/ar. If we had a vr game of thrones, then everyone would be in vr watching it. If ar made some job much better, everyone doing that job would use one. The modern platform paradigm means all the speculative, creative investment is on the platform itself. "Creators" make the content. Well... The prizes for creating "content" are mediocre. A breakthrough filmmaker will have to make the VR's first blockbuster for the art... and so will their financiers. You can raise some money to make ar software, but the unicorn potential is slim compared to a platform play... the big bucks aren't available for such.

jareklupinski 4y ago
If a family wants to watch game of thrones today, every one can gather around one TV screen and watch it using one person's account. I think Apple first needs to solve how to license a piece of media to one account that can be then be shared to anyone else in the same room, or a lot of families are never going to try it. The Nintendo DS blew me away with its "buy one game and let others download the multiplayer part for free" approach.
- jclardy 4y ago
  Apple already built this in an underutilized iOS feature - SharePlay.

mdorazio 4y ago

Going to have to disagree with you. I tried Hololens 2 extensively and found it pretty bad. Terrible UI/UX, crappy field of view, muted colors, not-great resolution, and just not all that more useful than a VR headset with decent pass-through.

kmarc 4y ago

> Because it’s easier to just pull out your smartphone, get whatever you need done, then put it back in your pocket. FWIW I see an alarmingly lot of people glued to their phone while walking, in a restaurant, on the train, while driving, etc. Once it's normalized that they don't actually have to "pull out, put it back", just use (wear) it all the time as it is with phones, there will be a market.

kredd 4y ago
You still have some sort of spatial awareness while using a phone, which makes it more acceptable to use in public. Like, if I’m dining solo, and a waiter comes by, I will still acknowledge their existence and be able to respond to them, have an eye contact and be able to use your body language. That’s kind of lost in AR/VR case.
- pitched 4y ago
  The headsets that exist today are very, very isolating. The whole idea behind them is to bring you somewhere else! To get AR right though, we need to be talking about something more like a projection like Google Glass. To bring the interface to you instead of bringing you to the interface means that pass-through must work when it’s powered off.
- bredren 4y ago
  The Reality headset apparently addresses this with an external display that shows the user’s eyes. It seems hard to imagine how this could possibly be enough to satisfy the waiter scenario you’ve described. But my understanding is that it attempts to handle some version of this social need.
- kmarc 4y ago
  Just to make a point, some of the aforementioned people are absolutely unaware of their surroundings, won't acknowledge the waiter's existence, nor have an eye contact with them, while they are on their phone. Immersive experience, that is. (note that I understand your point, just want to be sarcastic and bitter when I think about phone / AR-VR and other social media addicted people, who are eventually going to be the target audience of any of these new time wasters)

nabla9 4y ago

Apple addresses these issues by selling it to architects, engineers, designers, and other professionals who have an actual use case for the device. They sell million or less in year or two. This is simply too expensive to be a consumer device. There must be at least 5-6 years of iteration until it finds use on the mass market.

shostack 4y ago

Generally agree. Read Rainbow's End for an example of what reduced friction UI is like for AR. But it is enabled by input and display devices that are several generations ahead. Heck, even Cyberpunk 2077 is somewhat interesting in this regard. I started with a Corpo character and realized the persistent screen elements with a news ticker, some other data etc were interesting in a game world I knew nothing about. I imagine having extremely limited but immediately present text overlays would be exceptionally useful to replace my phone or watch if the device enabling it was of a sufficiently unassuming form factor that didn't take work to use. If Apple can give me the equivalent of what airpods did you headphones with cords but for smartphones, even if in an extremely limited capacity to just say, iMessage at first, that would be huge. Then give me a haptic ring I can fidget with that, when combined with a purpose built virtual keyboard, can do text entry, and that is a killer app IMHO.

germinalphrase 4y ago
Audio is the best and most natural AR experience right now. I would love to see greater investment here by Apple.