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I'm utterly unconvinced that AR/VR is a large market or is going to be game changing in every day life. I can see why Apple feel that they need to have a produc

I'm utterly unconvinced that AR/VR is a large market or is going to be game changing in every day life. I can see why Apple feel that they need to have a product in the market, but I wouldn't be surprised if its presented as “Just a Hobby” the same way that Steve Jobs presented Apple TV back when it launched (and for a good few years later). I really do think that Apple are much more likely to present some interesting AI products that run locally on Apple Silicone, thats where they truly can do something different and new that will impact all their customers. It will help them sell the next generation of iPhone and Macs. I want my AI to be local and privet. In some ways I think Humain have a better idea where this market is going to go. I'm not convinced by their product, I think it should be built into a phone, and I would be suppressed to see Apple do some stuff similar. To copy what I put in a comment the other day, a next gen Siri with chatGPT like functionality, trained on all your docs, email, calendar, movements, browser history, video calls. All local and not in the cloud: "Hey Siri, I had a meeting last summer in New York about project X, could you bring up all relevant documents and give me a brief summary of what we discussed and decisions we made. Oh and while you're at it, we ate at an awesome restaurant that evening, can you book a table for me for our meeting next week."

the_sleaze9 3y ago
> All local and not in the cloud Apple execs: "why not both?"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
woah 3y ago
Seems pretty simple. If you could have UI overlayed on the world around you, it would be huge, and would change how people use computers, like the smartphone did. The current stumbling block is that the tech sucks and the headsets are enormous. If someone got it into a lightweight pair of glasses or contact lenses, the use case is obvious, and it would be a big of a shift as the smartphone. Denying this is like being the guy in 1993 saying “why would I want a computer in my pocket? Am I going to work on spreadsheets on a tiny screen in the bathrooom? And where would I plug it in?”
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Don't forget the fingerprints! But yeah, so many things are obnoxious and clunky about smartphones. Glancing down is never a good look, let alone glancing down and then walking into a wall. The moment that minimum viable AR tech happens, people will suddenly remember how many compromises we have to make for smartphones.
  - skywhopper 3y ago
    I’m not sure that focusing on something no one else can see when you appear to be looking elsewhere is a good look either. At least other people can tell you are distracted when you’re looking down at your phone.
- vehemenz 3y ago
  > If you could have UI overlayed on the world around you, it would be huge, and would change how people use computers, like the smartphone did. Is this really a game-changer? Technology adoption is all about tradeoffs. We already have location-based services and applications that are granular enough for most purposes. AR applications add sensory awareness and localized interaction at the cost of distraction and intrusiveness. History is littered with inventions that were supposed to be the next telephone, computer, smartphone, etc., but most of them never materialize because they don't meet people's practical needs. And if AR/VR isn't the quintessential solution in search of a problem, I don't know what is.
  - EnragedParrot 3y ago
    It's absolutely a game-changer. Imagine having driving or walking directions laid out on the street in front of you. Imagine using AI to help you identify things like engine parts in your car, plants, birds, other people (never forget a name again). Looking at a package and scanning the barcode to get price comparisons. Recipe directions on the counter in front of you, even labeling the next ingredient and how much of it to measure. Walk into a museum and see highlighted details of every painting or information about a particular element in a sculpture. First aid details right in front of you, keeping both hands free to offer assistance in a roadside accident. Live AR-driven instructions for changing a tire or locating an oilpan plug. Currently any time you need information you have to pull yourself away from your present moment to dive into your phone. AR will make it so the information you need is just integrated into the world around you.
_fat_santa 3y ago
With Apple Silicone, I think Apple is in the perfect place to take advantage of the AI craze to sell hardware with something like "Neural Engine V2". If they can figure out how to run AI workloads at fraction of the cost of what is costs on current hardware, I can see there being a huge market for their Mac's and they could even bring back XServe and become the predominant player in the "Server Hardware for AI" space.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > If they can figure out how to run AI workloads at fraction of the cost of what is costs on current hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase It's discussed quite a bit on this site, but I wouldn't expect Apple to pull ahead in the GPU department. They really lit a fire under Intel and AMD's ass with the M1's IPC, but Nvidia laughed their way to the bank with every M1 upgrade. Even the 5nm M1 Ultra struggled to keep up with Nvidia's 10nm, bog-cheap 30-series cards. In the datacenter it's even more of a blowout, Apple would have to invest in something competitive with CUDA to turn heads. That's no small feat, and I don't think it's possible with an overnight API launch. It takes time and integration into the industry, something Apple wasn't patient enough for (see: Xserve).
  - pazimzadeh 3y ago
    What about in terms of performance per watt, rather than pure performance?
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      It's still not favorable, even compared to last-gen (30XX series) hardware. Here's the OpenCL scores for multiple different GPUs, including the Ultra: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks The M1 Ultra is a 200w chip, fabricated with 5nm silicon. It's being outclassed by the RTX 3060, a cheap 10nm card that draws ~170w max. In Nvidia's 40-series cards (on 4nm), the M1 Ultra's performance profile is most comparable to a laptop-class RTX 4060 that draws less than 115 watts. There's a story in the total package draw to be made here, and it does weigh slightly in Apple's favor. Overall though, even with last-gen cards it's clear that there's a massive performance-per-watt lead in Nvidia's favor right now. Which is impressive, considering how they've been stuck with second-class silicon when the M1 Ultra debuted.
dangus 3y ago
VR and AR are a solution looking for a problem. It's admittedly a cool tech demo. I enjoyed my time playing Half Life: Alyx and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners on my Valve Index before I decided to sell it out of disuse. The article says that Apple has a glasses product and a VR/AR product that sounds similar to a Quest Pro. So if we look at the glasses product it immediately runs into a lot of issues. Do I want to be wearing glasses? Do I already own glasses? Do I like how glasses look on my face? Wearable tech is very personal especially when it's sitting on your face. At best this is a product for industrial environments. Then the Quest Pro-like VR/AR product...separate battery pack in your pocket, need I say more? Now compare that experience to an Oculus Quest for $300. It doesn't really matter that the Quest is a less capable product, it's at the right price point and form factor and its strong sales show it.
- vehemenz 3y ago
  Agreed. The technologies will have their uses, like entertainment, training, education, and therapy, but it will never meet mass adoption for practical reasons like price, safety, and power consumption. I'd be curious to know why so many people think otherwise.
- zooch 3y ago
  I don't think it's a solution looking for a problem. I'd be willing to put them on at work and see which pins on a piece of hardware do what instead of looking back and forth between a datasheet. Lots of examples exactly like that, especially if the glasses are fed sensor data so the temperature/pressure appears right beside the area it is measuring.
  - dangus 3y ago
    Like I said, industrial environments. A small niche group of people and businesses who could use some information in front of their face as they do hands-on work. Estimates of the size of this market were in the single digit billions of dollars for Google, who bailed out of Google Glass recently: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/google-glass-enterprise-market-size.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/google-glass-enterprise-mark... For comparison, the iPhone makes $200 billion in revenue every year. Apple Services (Music, TV+, etc) make something like $20 billion every quarter. Apple does not enter many businesses that only have the potential to make $1-2 billion.
crooked-v 3y ago
> I'm utterly unconvinced that AR/VR is a large market Gorilla Tag, an indie VR game where you're an ape and run around with your hands and tag people (seriously, that's the whole thing) has made $26 million selling virtual hats and has peaks of 90,000 concurrent users.
- vyrotek 3y ago
  Wow, I had no idea it made that much money. My kids love it. I think what makes it stick is that it's more than just a game. It's a social space where my kids jump in to sometimes just to chat with their friends from school. Reminds me of hanging out in Team Fortress 2 game servers and just chatting while casually screwing around in the game. Here's the interview where those stats came from for those curious. https://venturebeat.com/games/how-gorilla-tag-made-it-big-on-the-quests-not-store/ https://venturebeat.com/games/how-gorilla-tag-made-it-big-on...

the_sleaze9 3y ago

> All local and not in the cloud Apple execs: "why not both?"

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

woah 3y ago

Seems pretty simple. If you could have UI overlayed on the world around you, it would be huge, and would change how people use computers, like the smartphone did. The current stumbling block is that the tech sucks and the headsets are enormous. If someone got it into a lightweight pair of glasses or contact lenses, the use case is obvious, and it would be a big of a shift as the smartphone. Denying this is like being the guy in 1993 saying “why would I want a computer in my pocket? Am I going to work on spreadsheets on a tiny screen in the bathrooom? And where would I plug it in?”

jjoonathan 3y ago
Don't forget the fingerprints! But yeah, so many things are obnoxious and clunky about smartphones. Glancing down is never a good look, let alone glancing down and then walking into a wall. The moment that minimum viable AR tech happens, people will suddenly remember how many compromises we have to make for smartphones.
- skywhopper 3y ago
  I’m not sure that focusing on something no one else can see when you appear to be looking elsewhere is a good look either. At least other people can tell you are distracted when you’re looking down at your phone.
vehemenz 3y ago
> If you could have UI overlayed on the world around you, it would be huge, and would change how people use computers, like the smartphone did. Is this really a game-changer? Technology adoption is all about tradeoffs. We already have location-based services and applications that are granular enough for most purposes. AR applications add sensory awareness and localized interaction at the cost of distraction and intrusiveness. History is littered with inventions that were supposed to be the next telephone, computer, smartphone, etc., but most of them never materialize because they don't meet people's practical needs. And if AR/VR isn't the quintessential solution in search of a problem, I don't know what is.
- EnragedParrot 3y ago
  It's absolutely a game-changer. Imagine having driving or walking directions laid out on the street in front of you. Imagine using AI to help you identify things like engine parts in your car, plants, birds, other people (never forget a name again). Looking at a package and scanning the barcode to get price comparisons. Recipe directions on the counter in front of you, even labeling the next ingredient and how much of it to measure. Walk into a museum and see highlighted details of every painting or information about a particular element in a sculpture. First aid details right in front of you, keeping both hands free to offer assistance in a roadside accident. Live AR-driven instructions for changing a tire or locating an oilpan plug. Currently any time you need information you have to pull yourself away from your present moment to dive into your phone. AR will make it so the information you need is just integrated into the world around you.

_fat_santa 3y ago

With Apple Silicone, I think Apple is in the perfect place to take advantage of the AI craze to sell hardware with something like "Neural Engine V2". If they can figure out how to run AI workloads at fraction of the cost of what is costs on current hardware, I can see there being a huge market for their Mac's and they could even bring back XServe and become the predominant player in the "Server Hardware for AI" space.

smoldesu 3y ago
> If they can figure out how to run AI workloads at fraction of the cost of what is costs on current hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase It's discussed quite a bit on this site, but I wouldn't expect Apple to pull ahead in the GPU department. They really lit a fire under Intel and AMD's ass with the M1's IPC, but Nvidia laughed their way to the bank with every M1 upgrade. Even the 5nm M1 Ultra struggled to keep up with Nvidia's 10nm, bog-cheap 30-series cards. In the datacenter it's even more of a blowout, Apple would have to invest in something competitive with CUDA to turn heads. That's no small feat, and I don't think it's possible with an overnight API launch. It takes time and integration into the industry, something Apple wasn't patient enough for (see: Xserve).
- pazimzadeh 3y ago
  What about in terms of performance per watt, rather than pure performance?
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    It's still not favorable, even compared to last-gen (30XX series) hardware. Here's the OpenCL scores for multiple different GPUs, including the Ultra: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks The M1 Ultra is a 200w chip, fabricated with 5nm silicon. It's being outclassed by the RTX 3060, a cheap 10nm card that draws ~170w max. In Nvidia's 40-series cards (on 4nm), the M1 Ultra's performance profile is most comparable to a laptop-class RTX 4060 that draws less than 115 watts. There's a story in the total package draw to be made here, and it does weigh slightly in Apple's favor. Overall though, even with last-gen cards it's clear that there's a massive performance-per-watt lead in Nvidia's favor right now. Which is impressive, considering how they've been stuck with second-class silicon when the M1 Ultra debuted.

dangus 3y ago

VR and AR are a solution looking for a problem. It's admittedly a cool tech demo. I enjoyed my time playing Half Life: Alyx and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners on my Valve Index before I decided to sell it out of disuse. The article says that Apple has a glasses product and a VR/AR product that sounds similar to a Quest Pro. So if we look at the glasses product it immediately runs into a lot of issues. Do I want to be wearing glasses? Do I already own glasses? Do I like how glasses look on my face? Wearable tech is very personal especially when it's sitting on your face. At best this is a product for industrial environments. Then the Quest Pro-like VR/AR product...separate battery pack in your pocket, need I say more? Now compare that experience to an Oculus Quest for $300. It doesn't really matter that the Quest is a less capable product, it's at the right price point and form factor and its strong sales show it.

vehemenz 3y ago
Agreed. The technologies will have their uses, like entertainment, training, education, and therapy, but it will never meet mass adoption for practical reasons like price, safety, and power consumption. I'd be curious to know why so many people think otherwise.
zooch 3y ago
I don't think it's a solution looking for a problem. I'd be willing to put them on at work and see which pins on a piece of hardware do what instead of looking back and forth between a datasheet. Lots of examples exactly like that, especially if the glasses are fed sensor data so the temperature/pressure appears right beside the area it is measuring.
- dangus 3y ago
  Like I said, industrial environments. A small niche group of people and businesses who could use some information in front of their face as they do hands-on work. Estimates of the size of this market were in the single digit billions of dollars for Google, who bailed out of Google Glass recently: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/google-glass-enterprise-market-size.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/google-glass-enterprise-mark... For comparison, the iPhone makes $200 billion in revenue every year. Apple Services (Music, TV+, etc) make something like $20 billion every quarter. Apple does not enter many businesses that only have the potential to make $1-2 billion.

crooked-v 3y ago

> I'm utterly unconvinced that AR/VR is a large market Gorilla Tag, an indie VR game where you're an ape and run around with your hands and tag people (seriously, that's the whole thing) has made $26 million selling virtual hats and has peaks of 90,000 concurrent users.

vyrotek 3y ago
Wow, I had no idea it made that much money. My kids love it. I think what makes it stick is that it's more than just a game. It's a social space where my kids jump in to sometimes just to chat with their friends from school. Reminds me of hanging out in Team Fortress 2 game servers and just chatting while casually screwing around in the game. Here's the interview where those stats came from for those curious. https://venturebeat.com/games/how-gorilla-tag-made-it-big-on-the-quests-not-store/ https://venturebeat.com/games/how-gorilla-tag-made-it-big-on...