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Now I am a lowly programmer + VR enthusiast, so my opinion does not count. But, how do big companies allow Apple to get away with such easy wins !?? Apple said

by screye 3y ago

Now I am a lowly programmer + VR enthusiast, so my opinion does not count. But, how do big companies allow Apple to get away with such easy wins !?? Apple said : "We are going to throw infinite money at a pilot product that's basically a tech demo, and convince the market that this tech is for-real-for-real." Meanwhile, Facebook refused to create a balls-to-the-wall VR headset for years and still ended up with a conservative 1500$ device even though they knew no one will purchase it. T̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶i̶r̶,̶ ̶C̶a̶r̶m̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶u̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶-̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶i̶d̶e̶l̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶Z̶u̶c̶k̶'̶s̶ ̶p̶u̶s̶h̶ ̶t̶o̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶a̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶l̶e̶.̶ (I might have mis-remembered) Apple's strategy is dead obvious. Of course. When you want people to change how they have consumed information for decades, you HAVE to blow their socks off. Samsung understood this with the 2000$ Fold devices. The first computers cost tens-of-thousands of 2023 dollars. Car manufacturers understand this with Halo cars. Facebook had a 7-8 year head start, and it never struck them to lead with a 'Halo VR device' ? Meta has among the best ML teams in the world who could produce 'Apple quality' face renders with ease. Sadly, the entire group was strapped down due to limitations of the kind of compute you can fit into a 400$ device. premature optimization is the root of all evil -Knuth Amen Donald, Amen. ____________ What makes Apple great: All big companies have competent employees. Competent employees come together in dysfunctional manners. 100 good ideas produce 1 terrible one and the final result looks worse than any of the initial solutions. Apple somehow manages to preserve their obvious wisdoms & the brilliance of the best ideas across their development (product and software) process. The constant erosion caused by committees, meetings & standard communication friction does not atrophy the seed that was the initial idea. It seems like faint praise. But, despite sounding easy, Apple seems to be the only company that's able to do this on a consistent basis with physical electronics. (video games, cars, construction projects achieve this in their field, but consumer electronics seems to completely lack this, barring Apple)

mattnewton 3y ago
My hot take from a random person spending time in the trenches: Meta leadership is focused on a _meta_ problem, namely that they do not own a major platform and are constrained from further growth compared to Apple and Google who do own major platforms. They are perfectly happy to be the android to whatever the next iOS is. From that perspective, a halo device is a risky bet because it doesn’t let you onboard a lot of people quickly and start building platform.
- noirscape 3y ago
  The problem with Meta is far deeper than a few corporate heads or what they control - the customer just straight up does not trust them. Privacy is something they've never really been good with (remember, they were at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal) and whenever they've been asked to do any form of moderation, Metas name always gets dragged through the mud (regardless on if you think they screwed up or not, this is about how this affected their PR). It doesn't matter how much money they dump into VR - unless they either get to brand it fully away from Facebook or do some serious PR repairing, their VR efforts won't work out. Privacy is a big thing and for Facebook/Meta, that is the one name even most average users will recognize as "do not trust" when it comes to their privacy related matters. Note that this only really goes for the Facebook and Meta brand names because Meta spend a lot of time promoting the rename of Facebook to Meta, so it inherited all that distrust. It doesn't go for Instagram or WhatsApp.
  - tomp 3y ago
    The problem is even deeper than lack of trust/privacy. It's that Meta's business model optimises for the wrong thing. M$ optimises for pleasing employers. Meta & Google optimise for pleasing advertisers. Amazon optimises for cheapness. Only Apple actually optimises for pleasing consumers, with amazing products. It would require a fundamental pivot in company strategy, their raison d'être.
    - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
      That’s a great way of putting it. It’s not necessarily that any given path is _bad_, but some of those paths aren’t consumer/privacy/business/whatever-friendly. I think Meta and Amazon stand alone here with a different problem than the rest, which is in terms of people that they both have sociopathic leadership. Technically, neither have an “in-hand/hands-on” platform either: no desktop OS or truly viable productivity platform. Amazon doesn’t even use the AWS WorkMail. Those two things combined make the erraticism seem perfectly “normal”. I think Google’s problems are survivable if they get rid of Pichai and learn to focus.
- 3y ago
bufferoverflow 3y ago
$3500 + tax device won't scale. It's not something that most people have a budget for.
- screye 3y ago
  A Halo device is not meant to sell, it is meant to impress. Apple doesn't want to sell this Headset at all. They want everyone to wish for a headset when it is able to sell one for $1000. This is what long term planning looks like. You need to prime your audience to buy something, before they actually want to go out and buy it. A few hundred millions wasted in the development of this device is pocket change for Apple.
  - function_seven 3y ago
    > This is what long term planning looks like. You need to prime your audience to buy something, before they actually want to go out and buy it. When the Apple Watch was first unveiled, my opinion was something along the lines of, "What, I'm so lazy that I'll spend $400 to avoid pulling my phone out of my pocket?" When the AirPods were released, I probably said something like, "What, I'm supposed to hate a little wire so much that I'll spend $200 to eliminate it and now I have another thing to charge? Hah!" But with both of these, after enough exposure and seeing people I know use them consistently, I caved. And yeah, no way I'll go back to wired ear buds when I'm running or walking the dog. No way I'll ditch this watch now.
    - gavinmckenzie 3y ago
      100%. I thought the same thing with my Apple Watch and I resisted spending what I considered to be an unreasonable amount on earbuds as I didn’t care (or so I thought) about having wireless earbuds. But eventually so many colleagues had them and talked to me about how great they were that I caved and bought a pair. Wow was I wrong about how wireless earbuds was something I didn’t need. Then I started evangelizing to people about them, and the cycle continued.
      - 3y ago
neom 3y ago
Apple seems to have two modes they do quite well, create tomorrow, refine today (as it pertains to technology/personal computing). Some % of the company seems to be focused on extremely polished loooonngg term second market mover advantage of bleeding edge tech, and some % of the company seems to be focused on continuous improvement of what exists today. Apple does a great job of working on cutting edge technology that is generally applicable, watching other companies implement that technology, and then leap frogging them. At the same time, they improve their current offerings and "future focused groups" learn from what "current focused groups" are doing. I guess it's why you see fits and starts from Apple. Has Apple every introduced anything totally new? Has Apple really "invented" anything product wise? I think they're just masters of second market mover advantage. This is a great blog post: https://researchnarrative.com/thinkerry/the-company-that-could-have-been-apple/ https://researchnarrative.com/thinkerry/the-company-that-cou... "In 1979, a 24-year-old Steve Jobs struck a deal with the executives at Xerox: Jobs would allow the investment wing of Xerox to buy shares in Apple at a pre-IPO price, and in exchange Apple’s team of engineers would get to take an “open-kimono” tour of Xerox PARC. Over two visits, Apple engineers were given the ability to look under the hood of PARC’s most impressive innovations." What a deal to strike, and at 24.
- bmitc 3y ago
  > Apple seems to have two modes they do quite well, create tomorrow, refine today. Isn't this a bit hyperbolic for a company that makes personal computers, smartphones, and tablets?
  - kanbara 3y ago
    apple have changed or introduced dominant paradigms that have shaped the entire computing industry several times, and have changed how most of the world access or use technology
  - schnable 3y ago
    Not really - it's Apple that made them ubiquitous and thus mundane.
  - runjake 3y ago
petersellers 3y ago
> Carmack had been pushing for an all-out device but got sidelined by Zuck's push towards cheap and scale Is that true? From this article[1], it sounds like he had been pushing for cheap headsets, not expensive ones: > There he talked about his internal efforts to push for the development of a "super cheap, super lightweight" Meta VR headset that could come in at "$250 and 250 grams." Instead, Meta has put its recent VR hardware efforts behind the heavily overdesigned and expensive $1,500 Quest Pro. "We're not building that [cheap, light] headset today, but I keep trying," Carmack said with some exasperation during the keynote. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/john-carmack-leaves-meta-after-a-decade-fighting-to-make-vr-a-reality/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/john-carmack-leaves-m...
- wslh 3y ago
  Well, as an Oculus customer I can say that the Apple vision is far far from Meta one, beyond what, with all due respect, Carmack thinks about Meta failures. Apple includes a complete vision of an operating system on a new device while Meta vision is much narrow: run VR apps in a VR device (which runs Android). In the vision of Apple you will run the same, again the same!, apps but with a new experience in a new form-factor. In addition of that you will run the obvious specific apps. I imagine that they will launch GarageBand anytime and use a piano or guitar in VR. Microsoft tried to bring a new operating system for multiple form factors (e.g. tablet) which turns to be an messed UX. I really don't think many people understand the Apple edge. Also, I think the Meta apps strategy is completely catastrophic: I don't see a significant amount of apps in their ecosystem. When Nintendo, Microsoft (Xbox), and Sony launch a new device they have a good list of games in the pipeline. I can also add that I contacted several people at Meta about a specific VR initiative and nobody answered...
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I was excited to see Carmack working on VR, but in retrospect he may have been exactly the wrong guy. Romero knew what 3D shooters needed to be, Carmack knew how to make that happen within the constraints of the day. With Carmack’s guidance, Facebook made an eminently buildable VR headset, a perfect device for the constraints that limited VR at the time. I bet they could have satisfied a ton of demand if they’d shown anything that got people excited enough to actually have demand.
c00lio 3y ago
VR "for the masses" has always been hobbled by the extreme prices, extreme hardware demands and incompatibility. Even very early tech like VRML died because of that. I suspect Apple VR will lead to a short and shallow VR boom, followed by it going the way of Apple TV, 3D TV and (not quite comparable, so with reservations) AR glasses.
justinsaccount 3y ago
> To be fair, Carmack had been pushing for an all-out device but got sidelined by Zuck's push towards cheap and scale. You have that completely backwards. > "I've always been clear that I'm all about the cost-effective mass-market headsets being the most important thing for us and for the adoption of VR," Carmack said. "And Quest Pro is definitely not that..." https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/carmack-wants-a-250-vr-headset-to-counterpoint-the-1499-quest-pro/2/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/carmack-wants-a-250-v...
- screye 3y ago
  Thanks, corrected
throw74775 3y ago
[flagged]
beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
I think Apple might stumble over the same things as Meta and other AR/VR headset companies. The big issue for consumers is product differentiation. Put simply: How is the experience of using this product any different than another product that they already use? Fundamentally, these companies have to show how their product is a) unique and b) useful in a way that differentiates the headset from using a laptop or a tablet or a smartphone. I think all of them are great at marketing point a but seriously struggle with point b. Getting widespread adoption, in any way, requires moving beyond novelty factor and into serious impact on how people work or go about their lives. Apple seems to be really focusing on domestic, 'casual' applications, or 'knowledge work' style arrangements, like meetings or co-operative creative work. I don't think people will find much benefit in that outside of their normal desktop workstations. AR in warehouse or construction or more labour intensive situations or (unfortunately) military applications is actually where I think something like these headsets could be more successful. Cheaper devices do have an advantage in that respect, so long as the tech matches the user need. To summarize my point, I think we're still a good decade or more away from the point when these headsets reach anything near moderate adoption. At some point the cheap devices, the amazing tech, and the clear use-case will converge; but I don't think we're there yet.
- throw74775 3y ago
  I think you’re overthinking it. I was considering buying a new studio display for my Mac Studio. I have a single 4K display that is fine most of the time, but for serious work, I want more. That purchase is now on hold until I’ve tried Vision Pro. For just this application alone, Vision Pro is interesting. As well as a desk, my office has a sofa, and a round conference table. I like to be able to move from one to another for different activities because it’s better for my body. Being able to do this and still access my Mac, or have computing surfaces floating nearby would be a huge benefit for me. I also have a living room with a TV in it. For me, TV isn’t a social activity - it’s just a way to unwind or watch something of cultural significance. I would love to be able to remove the TV and arrange the room in a more social way. I’d also like to be able to watch movies etc. in other rooms. I’m considering having roommates, and being able to sometimes watch large screen content in my bedroom feels like it would take pressure off the shared spaces, and allow me to downsize my personal use of space more comfortably. If it works as well as is claimed, it’s practically a no-brainer for me to buy even at $3500, just based on the added freedom it would give in my own home.
DrThunder 3y ago
Maybe... it's also entirely possible this will go the way of Google glass.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  I seriously doubt people are going to walk into a bar and get punched with Vision Pro on their heads. Apple had years to look at everything everyone else did wrong.
  - DrThunder 3y ago
    No, I didn't mean it would be used exactly the same and people getting punched was not the reason Google Glass failed. It failed because it was pricey and no one saw a need to be walking around with a mixed reality device. I can't see Apple Vision doing anything better than me just using a normal kvm input. Hand gestures are incredibly overrated and so is seeing things in VR. It works to make games more immersive but that's about it.
thrashh 3y ago
One thing which ties this all together is that Apple has a full-blown legitimate OS that can run professional software that already exists. Throw it into a headset, driving up the price significantly, but potentially make a computer replacement. The only other company in the world that has an extensive OS ecosystem like that is Microsoft. Everyone else never really had a chance to make a new class of device.
- randmeerkat 3y ago
  > One thing which ties this all together is that Apple has a full-blown legitimate OS that can run professional software that already exists. Throw it into a headset, driving up the price significantly, but potentially make a computer replacement. There’s no reason that the iPhone or iPad couldn’t be a computer replacement. The issue is that Apple locks down devices preventing them from being fully utilized. I’m expecting the Vision to be just as locked down as iOS. What I would like to see is Valve take this on with a device as hackable as the Steam Deck.
  - htag 3y ago
    It's a long way away for corporate to buy it's developers a headset like what your describing. As far as Work goes, if you cannot get a corporate office to buy them then it's never going to take off.
    - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
      Yeah, there’s a big up front cost and it’s an almost total gamble. My spouse’s company bought an engineering team Oculus headsets. The thinking was they might generate new ideas and concepts worth exploring further. My understanding is that they use it for virtual golf games in lieu of Zoom meetings sometimes, and that’s about it. I think VR has a future, but I don’t think it has a broad workplace future. Medicine? Absolutely! Gaming? Sure! Office work? Ehhh
      - randmeerkat 3y ago
tootie 3y ago
Quest 2 is the best-selling headset to date. This Apple device will have an even smaller addressable market at the $3500 price. Meta can add more pixels faster than Apple can drop their price by 2/3. Really, Apple does a lot of things well, but their market supremacy is primarily due to marketing. They are incredibly well-positioned as a necessary luxury brand. They are "cool" while Android and Microsoft are not.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Yes it’s all marketing. People have been saying that for 20 years. It couldn’t possible have anything to do with having hardware that is literally years ahead of the competition, tight integration between products, a better user interface, etc.
  - ruszki 3y ago
    > a better user interface As somebody, who are changing between top iOS and Android phones all the time, I don’t see that much real difference in the same price category.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Well, obviously enough people do to pay Apple a premium and still Apple has 50% market share in the US…
  - tootie 3y ago
    Vertical integration/monopolism is part of it too. The money machine feeds everything else. They sell very high end hardware for uses that are beyond the needs of 99% of their market. I literally had a dream the other night that I still had my android phone from 5 years ago because it had an IR blaster I could use to control my TV. That's probably the last time a phone from any maker had a distinguishing feature worth paying for.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Yes, Apple with 10% of the PC market and 50% of phone market in the US is a “monopoly” > That's probably the last time a phone from any maker had a distinguishing feature worth paying for. Yet people by new phones every year. Every TV to a first approximation is a smart TV where you can control everything with an app.
wsatb 3y ago
Has anyone ever thought of Facebook as a pioneer in anything? They've made some smart purchases and stole a few ideas. I feel like their entire existence is based on right place, right time.
notacoward 3y ago
Maybe it's because Facebook's "move fast" culture, enforced by their performance review processes, isn't conducive to making a "halo" product. Apple's more authoritarian culture has its downsides, I'm sure, but one upside is that engineers don't have to take detours twice a year to produce intermediate results that will survive selfish criticism from their more short-term-focused peers.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
What is amazing to me is that no matter how much a company makes, you can't change its DNA. Facebook can never build a good physical product, no matter how much money they throw at it. Google can never make a good piece of software, though they can have very strong backend engineering for it, and so on. That is why people talk about culture a whole lot and why it is so important. I wonder if the culture is set and can never be changed though. Is it an immutable property of companies based on initialization?
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
  > Google can never make a good piece of software, I like Gmail. It started out good, and hasn't yet collapsed under all the features they've been throwing at it. Although recently I've been getting these brief freezes when I'm typing ... the end may be near.
- thfuran 3y ago
  It's not immutable, but it is very sticky, especially once it gets stuck in a feedback loop with process.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  > Google can never make a good piece of software, though they can have very strong backend engineering for it, and so on. I think it’s more accurate to say that Google struggles to make application layer software. Most of their successful products like search, YouTube, Maps and Gmail are successful because of infrastructure/data layer advantages despite unexceptional UX/FE. Chrome is a notable exception. > I wonder if the culture is set and can never be changed though. Is it an immutable property of companies based on initialization? I suspect there’s a feedback loop where the people who drove the initial product success end up running the organisation and their priorities dominate. I’d love to read a study that investigated this by looking at how org charts on LinkedIn evolve over time.
- wmeredith 3y ago
  Apple's Achilles heal here seems to be search. They just can't do it.
jayd16 3y ago
I think only Apple could have released such a headset and not been laughed off the stage. And beyond that, we're talking about a hardware platform that only exists for Apple. Meta isn't in a position to spin up a fab and out perform Qualcomm. What are the alternatives? I think you're grossly underestimating how easy this win is.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  Plus it will take 5-7 years for Android (Google) or Microsoft to get the rest of the industry to come together for creating / replicating a device of this calibre or maybe not at all.
danwee 3y ago
It's because Apple is a (top) hardware company (and a software one) and they have years of experience at it. Meta is a software company; they could become a hardware company, but that doesn't happen in just a few years.
- cj 3y ago
  To be fair, Oculus was a $2 billion acquisition by Facebook in 2014. That should have brought them the talent needed to make hardware devices, despite being a software company at heart.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    That’s not enough. Apple built its headset on top of 15 year mobile OS that has been ported across devices, custom built silicon, custom built cameras, screens, etc. Out of all the BigTech companies, Apple is the only one that does custom hardware at scale.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
This "Apple DNA" provides both advantages and disadvantages. The Apple Vision has a shell of metal & glass. On a product where weight is super important. How many grams could be shaved if they used plastic instead?
- throw74775 3y ago
  Aluminum is about 3x the weight of ABS, but is significantly stronger. It’s not at all obvious that any weight could be ‘shaved’ while still making the device as durable.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    We do already have an example of Apple using aluminium for a wearable device that's traditionally made of plastic - the AirPods Max. It's well known for being significantly heavier than the competition, they weren't able to reduce the volume of material enough to offset how much heavier it is.
    - throw74775 3y ago
      What makes you think they were trying to match the competition’s weight?
jmull 3y ago
Meta doesn't have the marketing chops, consumer product mindshare, or retail channel that Apple does, so I'm not sure Apple's approach makes sense for them. And it remains to be seen if Apple's approach will work (though I suspect it will, over time... as you suggest, the premium device will set the market and later Apple will make cheaper devices available that make different tradeoffs.)
partiallypro 3y ago
I'm not convinced it is or will be an "easy win" because the entire space is still so fundamentally flawed. Everyone I know with a VR headset has one...and barely ever uses it (similar to the smart speaker, which Apple also failed at.) Not because of quality of hardware or software (Meta's stuff is actually pretty impressive now), but that it's awkward and it's strapped to your face. I don't see how this really addresses that aspect. Apple can surprise you with how successful things they make can be, but I can't think of a product they have now that wasn't already in space with tons of successes. Phones, tablets, watches, earbuds, all were already fairly popular. Tablets maybe being the one they really brough into the fold of common use, but the others already existed they just "perfected" them. This is...mostly a failed space with very little penetration. It will be much harder.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
> T̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶i̶r̶,̶ ̶C̶a̶r̶m̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶u̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶-̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶i̶d̶e̶l̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶Z̶u̶c̶k̶'̶s̶ ̶p̶u̶s̶h̶ ̶t̶o̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶a̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶l̶e̶.̶ (I might have mis-remembered) According to the Lex Friedman podcast interview with Carmack, Carmack has been pushing for lower spec, cheap VR, probably on a phone, IIRC. Something people can afford and use day to day Then, using better use of hardware resources to push more performance out of vr/ar apps. He believes more in optimization than ordinary programmers. Doom runs on modern conference phones and smart appliances
minhazm 3y ago
I'm not sure it's fair to say that Facebook had a 7-8 yr head start because Apple has been developing every single component that goes into the VR headset for well over 10 yrs. They design their own cameras, displays, micro processors, lenses, speakers, sensors, etc. Apple has hundreds of engineers working on each of these components for various devices they sell. They've shipped a billion+ of their own custom processors and have a world class chip design team to make custom chips for specific products. Meta has no where near the level of hardware design expertise that Apple has. They've also been slowly laying a lot of this ground work for years now with ARKit and LiDAR on iPhones / iPad Pro, moving Mac's to Apple Silicon and supporting iPad apps on it (allows them to bootstrap the Vision Pro app store). Even if Apple found the displays, cameras, sensors, etc. the one thing they won't find available is the processors(s). Apple is shipping an M2 chip, which they use for desktop computing as well as a custom new chip to handle sensor information. I read that the actual parts cost of the Vision Pro is $1500, and that's with Apple having huge contracts with their suppliers for other components and getting a discount. Add in R&D costs and even at $3500 Apple is likely not making much on this device. If Meta were to make a similar device I think it would cost $5k or they would have to sell it at a major loss.
- jnsie 3y ago
  I'd be curious to know more about what has been done with ARKit since launch. I know it's a thing....I just don't know if it has been used for any major purpose or at any major scale and, by extension, if it is forming the ground work for anything.
  - RandallBrown 3y ago
    Every year at WWDC they've been announcing more and more improvements to ARKit. I've never seen any "killer apps" that use it but now it feels pretty clear it was being invested in for Vision.
  - minhazm 3y ago
    There are some really cool apps, but likely not ones that you and I would use on a daily basis. Most of it is like seeing furniture in your living room in AR, or products on amazon, etc. There's also some cool ones for scanning objects, generating blueprints of a house, and more. Even if the apps themselves aren't that useful right now, they've been working on the software & hardware to do this work for years and iterating on it. So when they finally launch Vision Pro they're not starting from scratch and a lot of the code is tested in the real world.
derefr 3y ago
> Apple seems to be the only company that's able to do this on a consistent basis with physical electronics. (video games, cars, construction projects achieve this in their field, but consumer electronics seems to completely lack this, barring Apple) It's funny watching the interactions between tech reviewers and (usually Shenzhen-based) consumer-electronics startups — think earbuds, "retro consoles", etc. Almost inevitably, the reviewer gradually develops domain knowledge from reviewing dozens of entrants into the space that allow them to say exactly what would make for a good device. Then one of the startups invites the reviewer to collaborate on a product design with them. The model that the reviewer had design input on becomes wildly successful, because it actually does some stuff right. And then, as soon as the reviewer is gone, everything the company makes goes right back to having the same obvious flaws. As if they're constitutionally incapable of learning what made their one good product succeed in the market and just replicating it.

by screye 3y ago

mattnewton 3y ago

My hot take from a random person spending time in the trenches: Meta leadership is focused on a _meta_ problem, namely that they do not own a major platform and are constrained from further growth compared to Apple and Google who do own major platforms. They are perfectly happy to be the android to whatever the next iOS is. From that perspective, a halo device is a risky bet because it doesn’t let you onboard a lot of people quickly and start building platform.

noirscape 3y ago
The problem with Meta is far deeper than a few corporate heads or what they control - the customer just straight up does not trust them. Privacy is something they've never really been good with (remember, they were at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal) and whenever they've been asked to do any form of moderation, Metas name always gets dragged through the mud (regardless on if you think they screwed up or not, this is about how this affected their PR). It doesn't matter how much money they dump into VR - unless they either get to brand it fully away from Facebook or do some serious PR repairing, their VR efforts won't work out. Privacy is a big thing and for Facebook/Meta, that is the one name even most average users will recognize as "do not trust" when it comes to their privacy related matters. Note that this only really goes for the Facebook and Meta brand names because Meta spend a lot of time promoting the rename of Facebook to Meta, so it inherited all that distrust. It doesn't go for Instagram or WhatsApp.
- tomp 3y ago
  The problem is even deeper than lack of trust/privacy. It's that Meta's business model optimises for the wrong thing. M$ optimises for pleasing employers. Meta & Google optimise for pleasing advertisers. Amazon optimises for cheapness. Only Apple actually optimises for pleasing consumers, with amazing products. It would require a fundamental pivot in company strategy, their raison d'être.
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    That’s a great way of putting it. It’s not necessarily that any given path is _bad_, but some of those paths aren’t consumer/privacy/business/whatever-friendly. I think Meta and Amazon stand alone here with a different problem than the rest, which is in terms of people that they both have sociopathic leadership. Technically, neither have an “in-hand/hands-on” platform either: no desktop OS or truly viable productivity platform. Amazon doesn’t even use the AWS WorkMail. Those two things combined make the erraticism seem perfectly “normal”. I think Google’s problems are survivable if they get rid of Pichai and learn to focus.
3y ago

bufferoverflow 3y ago

$3500 + tax device won't scale. It's not something that most people have a budget for.

screye 3y ago
A Halo device is not meant to sell, it is meant to impress. Apple doesn't want to sell this Headset at all. They want everyone to wish for a headset when it is able to sell one for $1000. This is what long term planning looks like. You need to prime your audience to buy something, before they actually want to go out and buy it. A few hundred millions wasted in the development of this device is pocket change for Apple.
- function_seven 3y ago
  > This is what long term planning looks like. You need to prime your audience to buy something, before they actually want to go out and buy it. When the Apple Watch was first unveiled, my opinion was something along the lines of, "What, I'm so lazy that I'll spend $400 to avoid pulling my phone out of my pocket?" When the AirPods were released, I probably said something like, "What, I'm supposed to hate a little wire so much that I'll spend $200 to eliminate it and now I have another thing to charge? Hah!" But with both of these, after enough exposure and seeing people I know use them consistently, I caved. And yeah, no way I'll go back to wired ear buds when I'm running or walking the dog. No way I'll ditch this watch now.
  - gavinmckenzie 3y ago
    100%. I thought the same thing with my Apple Watch and I resisted spending what I considered to be an unreasonable amount on earbuds as I didn’t care (or so I thought) about having wireless earbuds. But eventually so many colleagues had them and talked to me about how great they were that I caved and bought a pair. Wow was I wrong about how wireless earbuds was something I didn’t need. Then I started evangelizing to people about them, and the cycle continued.
    - 3y ago

neom 3y ago

Apple seems to have two modes they do quite well, create tomorrow, refine today (as it pertains to technology/personal computing). Some % of the company seems to be focused on extremely polished loooonngg term second market mover advantage of bleeding edge tech, and some % of the company seems to be focused on continuous improvement of what exists today. Apple does a great job of working on cutting edge technology that is generally applicable, watching other companies implement that technology, and then leap frogging them. At the same time, they improve their current offerings and "future focused groups" learn from what "current focused groups" are doing. I guess it's why you see fits and starts from Apple. Has Apple every introduced anything totally new? Has Apple really "invented" anything product wise? I think they're just masters of second market mover advantage. This is a great blog post: https://researchnarrative.com/thinkerry/the-company-that-could-have-been-apple/ https://researchnarrative.com/thinkerry/the-company-that-cou... "In 1979, a 24-year-old Steve Jobs struck a deal with the executives at Xerox: Jobs would allow the investment wing of Xerox to buy shares in Apple at a pre-IPO price, and in exchange Apple’s team of engineers would get to take an “open-kimono” tour of Xerox PARC. Over two visits, Apple engineers were given the ability to look under the hood of PARC’s most impressive innovations." What a deal to strike, and at 24.

bmitc 3y ago
> Apple seems to have two modes they do quite well, create tomorrow, refine today. Isn't this a bit hyperbolic for a company that makes personal computers, smartphones, and tablets?
- kanbara 3y ago
  apple have changed or introduced dominant paradigms that have shaped the entire computing industry several times, and have changed how most of the world access or use technology
- schnable 3y ago
  Not really - it's Apple that made them ubiquitous and thus mundane.
- runjake 3y ago

petersellers 3y ago

> Carmack had been pushing for an all-out device but got sidelined by Zuck's push towards cheap and scale Is that true? From this article[1], it sounds like he had been pushing for cheap headsets, not expensive ones: > There he talked about his internal efforts to push for the development of a "super cheap, super lightweight" Meta VR headset that could come in at "$250 and 250 grams." Instead, Meta has put its recent VR hardware efforts behind the heavily overdesigned and expensive $1,500 Quest Pro. "We're not building that [cheap, light] headset today, but I keep trying," Carmack said with some exasperation during the keynote. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/john-carmack-leaves-meta-after-a-decade-fighting-to-make-vr-a-reality/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/john-carmack-leaves-m...

wslh 3y ago
Well, as an Oculus customer I can say that the Apple vision is far far from Meta one, beyond what, with all due respect, Carmack thinks about Meta failures. Apple includes a complete vision of an operating system on a new device while Meta vision is much narrow: run VR apps in a VR device (which runs Android). In the vision of Apple you will run the same, again the same!, apps but with a new experience in a new form-factor. In addition of that you will run the obvious specific apps. I imagine that they will launch GarageBand anytime and use a piano or guitar in VR. Microsoft tried to bring a new operating system for multiple form factors (e.g. tablet) which turns to be an messed UX. I really don't think many people understand the Apple edge. Also, I think the Meta apps strategy is completely catastrophic: I don't see a significant amount of apps in their ecosystem. When Nintendo, Microsoft (Xbox), and Sony launch a new device they have a good list of games in the pipeline. I can also add that I contacted several people at Meta about a specific VR initiative and nobody answered...
bee_rider 3y ago
I was excited to see Carmack working on VR, but in retrospect he may have been exactly the wrong guy. Romero knew what 3D shooters needed to be, Carmack knew how to make that happen within the constraints of the day. With Carmack’s guidance, Facebook made an eminently buildable VR headset, a perfect device for the constraints that limited VR at the time. I bet they could have satisfied a ton of demand if they’d shown anything that got people excited enough to actually have demand.

c00lio 3y ago

VR "for the masses" has always been hobbled by the extreme prices, extreme hardware demands and incompatibility. Even very early tech like VRML died because of that. I suspect Apple VR will lead to a short and shallow VR boom, followed by it going the way of Apple TV, 3D TV and (not quite comparable, so with reservations) AR glasses.

justinsaccount 3y ago

> To be fair, Carmack had been pushing for an all-out device but got sidelined by Zuck's push towards cheap and scale. You have that completely backwards. > "I've always been clear that I'm all about the cost-effective mass-market headsets being the most important thing for us and for the adoption of VR," Carmack said. "And Quest Pro is definitely not that..." https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/carmack-wants-a-250-vr-headset-to-counterpoint-the-1499-quest-pro/2/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/carmack-wants-a-250-v...

screye 3y ago
Thanks, corrected

throw74775 3y ago

[flagged]

beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago

I think Apple might stumble over the same things as Meta and other AR/VR headset companies. The big issue for consumers is product differentiation. Put simply: How is the experience of using this product any different than another product that they already use? Fundamentally, these companies have to show how their product is a) unique and b) useful in a way that differentiates the headset from using a laptop or a tablet or a smartphone. I think all of them are great at marketing point a but seriously struggle with point b. Getting widespread adoption, in any way, requires moving beyond novelty factor and into serious impact on how people work or go about their lives. Apple seems to be really focusing on domestic, 'casual' applications, or 'knowledge work' style arrangements, like meetings or co-operative creative work. I don't think people will find much benefit in that outside of their normal desktop workstations. AR in warehouse or construction or more labour intensive situations or (unfortunately) military applications is actually where I think something like these headsets could be more successful. Cheaper devices do have an advantage in that respect, so long as the tech matches the user need. To summarize my point, I think we're still a good decade or more away from the point when these headsets reach anything near moderate adoption. At some point the cheap devices, the amazing tech, and the clear use-case will converge; but I don't think we're there yet.

throw74775 3y ago
I think you’re overthinking it. I was considering buying a new studio display for my Mac Studio. I have a single 4K display that is fine most of the time, but for serious work, I want more. That purchase is now on hold until I’ve tried Vision Pro. For just this application alone, Vision Pro is interesting. As well as a desk, my office has a sofa, and a round conference table. I like to be able to move from one to another for different activities because it’s better for my body. Being able to do this and still access my Mac, or have computing surfaces floating nearby would be a huge benefit for me. I also have a living room with a TV in it. For me, TV isn’t a social activity - it’s just a way to unwind or watch something of cultural significance. I would love to be able to remove the TV and arrange the room in a more social way. I’d also like to be able to watch movies etc. in other rooms. I’m considering having roommates, and being able to sometimes watch large screen content in my bedroom feels like it would take pressure off the shared spaces, and allow me to downsize my personal use of space more comfortably. If it works as well as is claimed, it’s practically a no-brainer for me to buy even at $3500, just based on the added freedom it would give in my own home.

DrThunder 3y ago

Maybe... it's also entirely possible this will go the way of Google glass.

slowmovintarget 3y ago
I seriously doubt people are going to walk into a bar and get punched with Vision Pro on their heads. Apple had years to look at everything everyone else did wrong.
- DrThunder 3y ago
  No, I didn't mean it would be used exactly the same and people getting punched was not the reason Google Glass failed. It failed because it was pricey and no one saw a need to be walking around with a mixed reality device. I can't see Apple Vision doing anything better than me just using a normal kvm input. Hand gestures are incredibly overrated and so is seeing things in VR. It works to make games more immersive but that's about it.

thrashh 3y ago

One thing which ties this all together is that Apple has a full-blown legitimate OS that can run professional software that already exists. Throw it into a headset, driving up the price significantly, but potentially make a computer replacement. The only other company in the world that has an extensive OS ecosystem like that is Microsoft. Everyone else never really had a chance to make a new class of device.

randmeerkat 3y ago
> One thing which ties this all together is that Apple has a full-blown legitimate OS that can run professional software that already exists. Throw it into a headset, driving up the price significantly, but potentially make a computer replacement. There’s no reason that the iPhone or iPad couldn’t be a computer replacement. The issue is that Apple locks down devices preventing them from being fully utilized. I’m expecting the Vision to be just as locked down as iOS. What I would like to see is Valve take this on with a device as hackable as the Steam Deck.
- htag 3y ago
  It's a long way away for corporate to buy it's developers a headset like what your describing. As far as Work goes, if you cannot get a corporate office to buy them then it's never going to take off.
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    Yeah, there’s a big up front cost and it’s an almost total gamble. My spouse’s company bought an engineering team Oculus headsets. The thinking was they might generate new ideas and concepts worth exploring further. My understanding is that they use it for virtual golf games in lieu of Zoom meetings sometimes, and that’s about it. I think VR has a future, but I don’t think it has a broad workplace future. Medicine? Absolutely! Gaming? Sure! Office work? Ehhh
    - randmeerkat 3y ago

tootie 3y ago

Quest 2 is the best-selling headset to date. This Apple device will have an even smaller addressable market at the $3500 price. Meta can add more pixels faster than Apple can drop their price by 2/3. Really, Apple does a lot of things well, but their market supremacy is primarily due to marketing. They are incredibly well-positioned as a necessary luxury brand. They are "cool" while Android and Microsoft are not.

scarface_74 3y ago
Yes it’s all marketing. People have been saying that for 20 years. It couldn’t possible have anything to do with having hardware that is literally years ahead of the competition, tight integration between products, a better user interface, etc.
- ruszki 3y ago
  > a better user interface As somebody, who are changing between top iOS and Android phones all the time, I don’t see that much real difference in the same price category.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Well, obviously enough people do to pay Apple a premium and still Apple has 50% market share in the US…
- tootie 3y ago
  Vertical integration/monopolism is part of it too. The money machine feeds everything else. They sell very high end hardware for uses that are beyond the needs of 99% of their market. I literally had a dream the other night that I still had my android phone from 5 years ago because it had an IR blaster I could use to control my TV. That's probably the last time a phone from any maker had a distinguishing feature worth paying for.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Yes, Apple with 10% of the PC market and 50% of phone market in the US is a “monopoly” > That's probably the last time a phone from any maker had a distinguishing feature worth paying for. Yet people by new phones every year. Every TV to a first approximation is a smart TV where you can control everything with an app.

wsatb 3y ago

Has anyone ever thought of Facebook as a pioneer in anything? They've made some smart purchases and stole a few ideas. I feel like their entire existence is based on right place, right time.

notacoward 3y ago

Maybe it's because Facebook's "move fast" culture, enforced by their performance review processes, isn't conducive to making a "halo" product. Apple's more authoritarian culture has its downsides, I'm sure, but one upside is that engineers don't have to take detours twice a year to produce intermediate results that will survive selfish criticism from their more short-term-focused peers.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

What is amazing to me is that no matter how much a company makes, you can't change its DNA. Facebook can never build a good physical product, no matter how much money they throw at it. Google can never make a good piece of software, though they can have very strong backend engineering for it, and so on. That is why people talk about culture a whole lot and why it is so important. I wonder if the culture is set and can never be changed though. Is it an immutable property of companies based on initialization?

B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
> Google can never make a good piece of software, I like Gmail. It started out good, and hasn't yet collapsed under all the features they've been throwing at it. Although recently I've been getting these brief freezes when I'm typing ... the end may be near.
thfuran 3y ago
It's not immutable, but it is very sticky, especially once it gets stuck in a feedback loop with process.
spacebanana7 3y ago
> Google can never make a good piece of software, though they can have very strong backend engineering for it, and so on. I think it’s more accurate to say that Google struggles to make application layer software. Most of their successful products like search, YouTube, Maps and Gmail are successful because of infrastructure/data layer advantages despite unexceptional UX/FE. Chrome is a notable exception. > I wonder if the culture is set and can never be changed though. Is it an immutable property of companies based on initialization? I suspect there’s a feedback loop where the people who drove the initial product success end up running the organisation and their priorities dominate. I’d love to read a study that investigated this by looking at how org charts on LinkedIn evolve over time.
wmeredith 3y ago
Apple's Achilles heal here seems to be search. They just can't do it.

jayd16 3y ago

I think only Apple could have released such a headset and not been laughed off the stage. And beyond that, we're talking about a hardware platform that only exists for Apple. Meta isn't in a position to spin up a fab and out perform Qualcomm. What are the alternatives? I think you're grossly underestimating how easy this win is.

passion__desire 3y ago
Plus it will take 5-7 years for Android (Google) or Microsoft to get the rest of the industry to come together for creating / replicating a device of this calibre or maybe not at all.

danwee 3y ago

It's because Apple is a (top) hardware company (and a software one) and they have years of experience at it. Meta is a software company; they could become a hardware company, but that doesn't happen in just a few years.

cj 3y ago
To be fair, Oculus was a $2 billion acquisition by Facebook in 2014. That should have brought them the talent needed to make hardware devices, despite being a software company at heart.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  That’s not enough. Apple built its headset on top of 15 year mobile OS that has been ported across devices, custom built silicon, custom built cameras, screens, etc. Out of all the BigTech companies, Apple is the only one that does custom hardware at scale.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

This "Apple DNA" provides both advantages and disadvantages. The Apple Vision has a shell of metal & glass. On a product where weight is super important. How many grams could be shaved if they used plastic instead?

throw74775 3y ago
Aluminum is about 3x the weight of ABS, but is significantly stronger. It’s not at all obvious that any weight could be ‘shaved’ while still making the device as durable.
- jsheard 3y ago
  We do already have an example of Apple using aluminium for a wearable device that's traditionally made of plastic - the AirPods Max. It's well known for being significantly heavier than the competition, they weren't able to reduce the volume of material enough to offset how much heavier it is.
  - throw74775 3y ago
    What makes you think they were trying to match the competition’s weight?

jmull 3y ago

Meta doesn't have the marketing chops, consumer product mindshare, or retail channel that Apple does, so I'm not sure Apple's approach makes sense for them. And it remains to be seen if Apple's approach will work (though I suspect it will, over time... as you suggest, the premium device will set the market and later Apple will make cheaper devices available that make different tradeoffs.)

partiallypro 3y ago

I'm not convinced it is or will be an "easy win" because the entire space is still so fundamentally flawed. Everyone I know with a VR headset has one...and barely ever uses it (similar to the smart speaker, which Apple also failed at.) Not because of quality of hardware or software (Meta's stuff is actually pretty impressive now), but that it's awkward and it's strapped to your face. I don't see how this really addresses that aspect. Apple can surprise you with how successful things they make can be, but I can't think of a product they have now that wasn't already in space with tons of successes. Phones, tablets, watches, earbuds, all were already fairly popular. Tablets maybe being the one they really brough into the fold of common use, but the others already existed they just "perfected" them. This is...mostly a failed space with very little penetration. It will be much harder.

barbariangrunge 3y ago

> T̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶i̶r̶,̶ ̶C̶a̶r̶m̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶u̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶-̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶i̶d̶e̶l̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶Z̶u̶c̶k̶'̶s̶ ̶p̶u̶s̶h̶ ̶t̶o̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶a̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶l̶e̶.̶ (I might have mis-remembered) According to the Lex Friedman podcast interview with Carmack, Carmack has been pushing for lower spec, cheap VR, probably on a phone, IIRC. Something people can afford and use day to day Then, using better use of hardware resources to push more performance out of vr/ar apps. He believes more in optimization than ordinary programmers. Doom runs on modern conference phones and smart appliances

minhazm 3y ago

I'm not sure it's fair to say that Facebook had a 7-8 yr head start because Apple has been developing every single component that goes into the VR headset for well over 10 yrs. They design their own cameras, displays, micro processors, lenses, speakers, sensors, etc. Apple has hundreds of engineers working on each of these components for various devices they sell. They've shipped a billion+ of their own custom processors and have a world class chip design team to make custom chips for specific products. Meta has no where near the level of hardware design expertise that Apple has. They've also been slowly laying a lot of this ground work for years now with ARKit and LiDAR on iPhones / iPad Pro, moving Mac's to Apple Silicon and supporting iPad apps on it (allows them to bootstrap the Vision Pro app store). Even if Apple found the displays, cameras, sensors, etc. the one thing they won't find available is the processors(s). Apple is shipping an M2 chip, which they use for desktop computing as well as a custom new chip to handle sensor information. I read that the actual parts cost of the Vision Pro is $1500, and that's with Apple having huge contracts with their suppliers for other components and getting a discount. Add in R&D costs and even at $3500 Apple is likely not making much on this device. If Meta were to make a similar device I think it would cost $5k or they would have to sell it at a major loss.

jnsie 3y ago
I'd be curious to know more about what has been done with ARKit since launch. I know it's a thing....I just don't know if it has been used for any major purpose or at any major scale and, by extension, if it is forming the ground work for anything.
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  Every year at WWDC they've been announcing more and more improvements to ARKit. I've never seen any "killer apps" that use it but now it feels pretty clear it was being invested in for Vision.
- minhazm 3y ago
  There are some really cool apps, but likely not ones that you and I would use on a daily basis. Most of it is like seeing furniture in your living room in AR, or products on amazon, etc. There's also some cool ones for scanning objects, generating blueprints of a house, and more. Even if the apps themselves aren't that useful right now, they've been working on the software & hardware to do this work for years and iterating on it. So when they finally launch Vision Pro they're not starting from scratch and a lot of the code is tested in the real world.

derefr 3y ago

> Apple seems to be the only company that's able to do this on a consistent basis with physical electronics. (video games, cars, construction projects achieve this in their field, but consumer electronics seems to completely lack this, barring Apple) It's funny watching the interactions between tech reviewers and (usually Shenzhen-based) consumer-electronics startups — think earbuds, "retro consoles", etc. Almost inevitably, the reviewer gradually develops domain knowledge from reviewing dozens of entrants into the space that allow them to say exactly what would make for a good device. Then one of the startups invites the reviewer to collaborate on a product design with them. The model that the reviewer had design input on becomes wildly successful, because it actually does some stuff right. And then, as soon as the reviewer is gone, everything the company makes goes right back to having the same obvious flaws. As if they're constitutionally incapable of learning what made their one good product succeed in the market and just replicating it.