14 ms·

This sounded weak to me. Apple is making an integrated headset: their own lenses, processor, ..., down to the operating system. The Quest uses an Android base

by ctvo 3y ago

This sounded weak to me. Apple is making an integrated headset: their own lenses, processor, ..., down to the operating system. The Quest uses an Android based operating system and a lot of off the shelf components. We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. A personal device like these headsets needs to be delightful. It has to be responsive. It has to have the little touches. It's much more difficult to do that when you're constrained by off the shelf components. Apple had the best touchpads for a decade because of those integrated properties, for example.

wahahah 3y ago
I really don't understand why nobody else has managed making decent touchpads. Is it not extremely high priority??
- xnyan 3y ago
  I worked at an electronics retailer in high school for a couple years, my job was to sell laptops. I sold a lot of laptops. Nerds like us who post comments on hacker news can have a hard time understanding the mind of the vast majority of regular people who simply could not care less about trackpad quality. It's just not a thing most people even think about.
  - ricardobeat 3y ago
    Most people don't care about 'drive shaft quality' or 'steering wheel quality' in their cars either, but you can be sure it will be taken good care of by engineering, and subconsciously noticed.
    - GeneralAntilles 3y ago
      There's truth in your point. People do feel the difference even when they don't notice it, but it doesn't seem like that's always (or even often?) reflected in the bottom line. Nissan sells an awful lot of cars with their crappy CVT transmissions and crossovers continue to be hugely popular in the US.
      - numpad0 3y ago
        People notice in subconscious but rarely in the wallet.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    If I may, I’d make a slight modification to your statement. The vast majority of people don’t care about trackpad quality when it comes to shopping. They do care when they *use* it but they either take it for granted when it works well, or it’s too small a papercut to trade in their device and buy/research a new one. but it all combines together to make a smoother experience when using it, and it can convert people as a part of a whole.
    - chaostheory 3y ago
      The vast majority of people don’t care enough to pay for it. This is why people balk at the price of Apple Vision even though Apple managed to miniaturize a Macbook into a visor and added LiDAR, two 4K screens, a separate depth sensor, several other cameras, and even a 3D camera to it That said, Mark’s devices aren’t bad for the price. They’ve been the best overall VR headsets for the past 2-3 years.
    - bodge5000 3y ago
      > or it’s too small a papercut to trade in their device and buy/research a new one. Most of the time they don't notice at all unless its truly atrocious or truly mind blowing (and whilst I can firmly say the macbook trackpad is the best I've ever used, lets be honest its not mind blowing). They might notice things don't feel as smooth as it did on their macbook (assuming they even had one last, if not how can you tell something is worse if its all you've ever had), but they're unlikely to narrow this down to the trackpad.
    - numpad0 3y ago
      Yes, they buy bottom of the barrel and, if it doesn’t work, assume that is where state of the art is. Few months back I’ve seen anecdotal posts somewhere that new generations of managers are trying to shift computing to phones and tablets because they’re “better than laptops”. No one enforces a delightfulness standard for Windows laptops, and it is creating a skewed perception.
      - throw9away6 3y ago
        I’m surprised we don’t have that yet. Your iPhone would make an excellent Citrix client just dock and wait for your text to show up as you type.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    I think the average person does care about and notice quality, its just a question of if they can afford it. When I look around the coworking space, its almost universally macbooks. And these aren't tech people mostly. But the uni student with a budget that only buys half a macbook doesn't get to care about trackpad quality. Normal people don't say things like "The trackpad is unresponsive and the wifi drivers unreliable" They say "I just don't like it" "It feels kinda crap"
  - SanjayMehta 3y ago
    With lowcost laptops I've noticed that most users end up using a mouse instead of the trackpad.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- emehex 3y ago
  My guess would be... patents? (Apple's got all the good ones?)
  - hedora 3y ago
    Apple did manage to patent the pythagorean theorem (“pinch zoom” uses the hypotenuse of a right triangle as the zoom factor), but, from what I can tell, the bad windows touchpad thing is self-inflicted.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  I was confused by "touchpad", I assume it's the trackpad ? More extensive touch support, like having touch support on the laptop display alleviates a lot of the trackpad needs. It's still nice when it smooth and responsive, but looking at the the Surface devices for instance, it's nice enough.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  What boggled my mind were the trackpads on some laptops that weren't just average, but actively bad. The worst by far I've ever used was on a circa-2007 HP convertible laptop that ran Vista. Despite it costing more than some models of MacBook at the time, the thing was built with that cheap creaky "fake metal" glossy plastic, and that included its trackpad. The trackpad would've been bad enough just like that with the smooth plastic gripping at your fingertips, but to make it worse its surface had inverse dimples, and because its touch sensitivity wasn't all that sensitive you had to apply more pressure when using it which pressed your fingers down into the dimples and made them stick even worse. Oh and of course, as was customary for non-Apple laptops at that point it was also tiny. It's almost as if it was someone's job to make that thing's trackpad terrible to use. Just mind boggling.
  - Gunnerhead 3y ago
    Oh God, the dimples. Or the textured trackpads that felt nothing short of sandpaper.
- hedora 3y ago
  Windows led to a few market failures like this. One that comes to mind is high DPI displays. In terms of pixels per inch, today’s 1080p displays are laughable by 2001 standards. It has been a quarter century since high DPI CRTs were affordable, and 20+ years since LCDs were. However, Windows wasn’t compatible with such things until at least 2010, so here we are a quarter century later, and laptop lines still often only offer meh-for-the-late-90’s displays. A more recent example is suspend resume. I’m not sure of the details, but I am sure that intel will never do better than S3 sleep from ten years ago, and Microsoft pushed them to change how sleep works.
- blooalien 3y ago
  I've been really pleased by the touchpads on Valve's Steam Controller, but they don't sell the Steam Controller anymore. :(
  - LynxInLA 3y ago
    They seem to have used them on the Steam Deck, so maybe they'll use them again in future projects.
    - blooalien 3y ago
      Here's hoping and wishing for a "Steam Controller 2". Fingers crossed.
- lazycouchpotato 3y ago
  It's certainly improved over the past few years to a point where they're comparable to Macbooks. Windows Precision drivers and large glass trackpads are slowly becoming common in mid to high tier Windows laptops.
- stocknoob 3y ago
  Dell, HP and the enterprises that buy them don’t really care about UX.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  I have an XPS 15, the touchpad is fine. When I use a macbook I don't think "oh my god the touchpad is great", although that might just be because I'm too busy thinking "oh my god this OS is terrible".
  - ctvo 3y ago
    The touchpad is mostly fine now though you could argue Apple laptops are still more responsive. It wasn't always the case.
  - 12345hn6789 3y ago
    Why does every comment chain devolve into this(although you admitted it)? Apple touch pads are an improvement over all other laptop brand touchpads. But then this fallacy is the only response. "These rounded corners in the UI really make me not care about the touch pad" "I wish I could care about touchpads, my ssd won't replace itself without a soldering iron though!" "They have touchpads? I use a mouse" Great. Apple touchpads are next generation compared to most other laptops.
livinglist 3y ago
Speaking of trackpad, I have never touched a mouse ever again since I started using Mac and it’s been 7 years now.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I use my MBA in clamshell mode, but with an Apple trackpad. I used a mouse with my work PC when I was a lawyer, and I did enjoy having various buttons for open-in-new-tab, back/forward, right-click. But it seems like this is all easily accomplished with gestures on Apple's trackpads, plus scrolling is easier.
armitron 3y ago
Exactly, if Meta sticks with snapdragon+android, it's game over for them. If you've been following John Carmack, one constant theme in his posts while still working there was his dissatisfaction with the underlying stack (Os+Hw) and not pushing the envelope hard enough. Apple has a huge advantage with its vertical integration and nearly complete control of the entire stack. Android being a janky/buggy/glitchy mess is the icing on the cake.
- kasrsf 3y ago
  Carmack also pushed for more affordable headsets to increase adoption of the technology. imo it is a technological marvel but the size of the demographic willing to spend $4k on a headset with no proven long term value is quite small.
makeitdouble 3y ago
> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. Is Microsoft today in a fundamentally problematic position ? Apple has the spotlight and a higher evaluation, but I'm not sure Google or Microsoft "haven't ended well". > A personal device like these headsets needs to be delightful. The number of people willing to pay for "delightful" is pretty small though. Even as today, the iPhone isn't winning on delight, it's primarily on the ecosystem, green bubbles, game payments etc., as we've heard in the numerous trials and hearings from Apple execs.
- pico303 3y ago
  Blackberry
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    Blackberry was making their own hardware and OS to almost the same extent as Apple does today...are you arguing that Apple will be the next BlackBerry ?
    - hyuuu 3y ago
      I am sure people have said the same argument about Blackberry being the next <insert even older tech company here>
      - fomine3 3y ago
        IBM!DEC!
    - mdasen 3y ago
      I'm not the same poster (and hate the one-word answers with nothing to back them up), but I think BlackBerry's position could be called similar to Meta's. They were already established with lower-cost, lower-spec'd devices. However, BlackBerry couldn't conceive of how more would be transformative. They insisted that the iPhone would flop because it didn't have a keyboard and such. When you said that the iPhone wasn't succeeding today based on delight, I'd argue that it's the only reason the iPhone succeeded. BlackBerry had an amazing brand and the ecosystem that you say it the reason the iPhone is successful today - including its own proprietary messenger service. The iPhone came along with delight and overthrew the established players. If the Vision Pro offers users an experience that they like, it could make the Quest series look like BlackBerries: low-rent devices that were bought as toys for enthusiasts before real devices came along. The thing about the iPhone is that people could instantly see what they'd enjoy it for. BlackBerries were a status symbol, had some business use cases, and were a nice toy for those who tried to buy distractions. When Apple introduced the iPhone, they showed real web browsing, useful maps (even before GPS), a better iPod than they'd ever seen, YouTube, and more. With the Vision Pro, Apple is showing me something I could see myself using. I could wear it writing code and have more display space than 3 displays (and still use my keyboard). I could watch movies, I could browse the web, and I could play games. Apple is showing me how it could become an integral part of my usage rather than just a gadget that I'm likely to ignore. I'm not an expert on the VR/AR space, but it sounds like the Quest devices don't really have the resolution for reading text comfortably which cuts out a lot of usage - just as the BlackBerry devices didn't have good web browsing and other stuff. That could leave the Quest series in the BlackBerry zone where they're trying to fill a similar niche, but they're limited in the things that bring users back to the device rather than it sitting in a corner unused. It also seems like the Vision Pro is likely to be a lot more responsive. Android tends to have a lot of input lag compared to iOS and Apple's M2 processor will run circles around the Qualcomm XR2 in the Quest Pro - plus Apple has a dedicated R1 processor for handling real-time sensor data. The XR2 has one performance core from 3 years ago compared to 4 performance cores in an M2. Meta can't even buy themselves a CPU that's competitive. Apple's M2 will be 40-50% faster on single-core stuff and it has 4 performance cores instead of 1 performance core in the top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. On multi-core, the M2 is twice as fast. Plus, it has its own dedicated processor for handling all the sensor data! When BlackBerry saw the iPhone design, they assumed Apple couldn't pull it off. They thought practically the whole inside would have to be battery. They weren't wrong about that, but Apple did pull it off. Is Meta thinking that Apple won't be able to pull off a better experience than their devices? I don't think companies are underestimating Apple at the moment. Sometimes with tech, it's about getting over a hump. Everyone had been trying to do handheld computers since the 80s - even Apple's Newton development started in the 80s. Apple was the one who finally got it over the hump where it was really useful. Likewise, it's not like headsets are new - Nintendo's Virtual Boy came out in 1995, 28 years ago. But the Virtual Boy didn't get over that hump just as the Newton didn't. With the Quest, if I have to strain to read text, maybe it hasn't gotten over the hump. Again, I'm not an expert in this area, but my point is that it's not just about better specs for the sake of better specs. It's about better specs that overcome a barrier to usefulness. Things like latency and display clarity matter a lot when we're talking about a headset device. And if we want to attribute Apple's success to its ecosystem, the Vision Pro ties into that ecosystem. You can run apps on Vision Pro and use it as a display for your MacBook. I understand the things I can already do if I had a Vision Pro, not just as a gadget. The Vision Pro might still be a flop. It's expensive and it might not offer that much more when in the real world. However, the keynote was really impressive to me. It seemed like something I'd get after it had been out for 4 years - kinda like the iPhone. But we'll have to wait and see what happens.
nharada 3y ago
> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position Isn't this what Android did? They seem like they're doing fine enough
- veidr 3y ago
  I believe OP is referring to how most Android phone vendors make no profits.
  - zmmmmm 3y ago
    That's fine with him, he doesn't want to make profits from the hardware.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      Most of the software profits are on IOS as well. I think you must know this, so I’m not sure what the angle is you’re playing.
      - pzo 3y ago
        But there is even much more profits with ads and sales in those apps - that is the biggest market than selling software. On android it's even hard to track how much profits is via subscription because platform is less restrictive and apple. And paid apps are slowly going away and are less relevant - it's been many years since mobile app peaked. Top apps these days in play store and app store are free.
      - zmmmmm 3y ago
        The difference here is Zuckerberg gets to be the equivalent of both Samsung and Google in the Android analogy. That's going to unlock far more opportunities for ecosystem profit than Android did when split b/w OEMs and Google.
- ctvo 3y ago
  > Isn't this what Android did? They seem like they're doing fine enough I don't think Meta's aspirations are to be Android. They were first movers in this space, spent billions and billions, only to be the less profitable, less coveted platform? As outsiders, this is already how we're looking at it when Apple stepped in, which is unfortunate, and why Mark's refusal to acknowledge reality isn't a great look.
oliwary 3y ago
I am not sure I agree. Meta can aim to be the android of the VR market, providing a decent product for much less money and being able to benefit from having much more devices out there. If VR becomes anywhere near as mainstream as phones at some point, meta will be very well placed to capture that position, which could be incredibly profitable.
gsatic 3y ago
> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. I dont know man. Historically who has been in Mark's position with 10 Billion+ $$ to spend on any one thing?
- nlitened 3y ago
  Literally any too-big-to-fail company in history?
zmmmmm 3y ago
> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position I think Zuckerberg would be elated if it plays out like iPhone vs Android.
- bhouston 3y ago
  Google Pixel devices likely are not making much money for Google. The value of Android for Google is in getting their software services everywhere. Zuckerberg is in a tough spot. Especially if Google uses its control of Android to push forward a VR version of it.
baby 3y ago
> The Quest uses an Android based operating system and a lot of off the shelf components. > We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. market share of android vs iOS in 2023: > Android 71.63 > iOS 27.71
- bhouston 3y ago
  “Thanks to its high average selling price and its healthy profit margins, Apple captured 50 percent of global smartphone revenues and more than 80 percent of the industry's profits in the first three months of 2023” https://www.statista.com/chart/29925/apples-share-of-the-global-smartphone-market/ https://www.statista.com/chart/29925/apples-share-of-the-glo... Apple is amazing at business. Hands down they are a phenomenal business. Destroying all other smartphone makers hands down.
  - baby 3y ago
    Isn't this kind of the same as saying that LVMH is such a better company than Uniqlo? LVMH makes so much more money, but is it something I'm personally interested in or want to buy? That's a different question.
    - bhouston 3y ago
      > Isn't this kind of the same as saying that LVMH is such a better company than Uniqlo? Objectively from the perspective of capitalism, LVHM is a better business if it makes more money. That doesn't mean you have to like LVHM products more than Uniqlo. That is personal preference and different from a business perspective.
- throw9away6 3y ago
  Yeah but unit sold doesn’t matter much when apples units sell for 700 and android ones for 150
  - shard 3y ago
    It matters when, in a world with only Apple, most of the world would still be using feature phones.
lanza 3y ago
> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. Meta doesn't need to dominate the market. Being the Android to Apple's iOS or the Windows to Apple's macOS is way more than fine for Meta's business. iPhone's did $250b in revenue in 2022. Meta as a whole did $117b. They aren't looking to replace Apple, they are just trying to find a way to get their revenue growing again. It's a huge win in their eye's if Quest3 contributes reasonably well to bringing their 2023 revenue to about $130b. If there was a genuine third company competing with Meta then that would be a problem for them. Valve and Pico are roughly 0% the size of Meta and Apple. They just won't have the resources to actually compete. Google has been rumored to be working on a headset. If that's the case and they didn't fire that entire org then that would be Meta's only real competition for second place.
- MaxikCZ 3y ago
  > They aren't looking to replace Apple, they are just trying to find a way to get their revenue growing again. Thats like "they arent trying to be the best, they are just trying to be a little better. Ofc they are trying to beat apple, and everyone else. Or you are saing that if they were magically given the opportunity to become most valued company, theyd simply pass with "no thanks, thats more than we want" attitude? Every major corporation is trying their absolute hardest to grow.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    They're developing completely different products. Apple's product is a productivity enhancing tool, the main use case is a mobile desk so that you can use your computer anywhere in the world and the monitor setup is always exactly the way you want. Meta is going for the console market. The type of product kids get for christmas.
    - ctvo 3y ago
      > Apple's product is a productivity enhancing tool, the main use case is a mobile desk so that you can use your computer anywhere in the world and the monitor setup is always exactly the way you want. Apple's initial use cases are around work, entertainment, and meetings. It's ridiculous to think they won't expand this and compete in every use case once they get market shares and a developer eco-system. They are not different products. That's like saying a MacBook Pro and a HP laptop are different products. No, one is a high-end, more expensive, more coveted product, and the other isn't.

by ctvo 3y ago

wahahah 3y ago

I really don't understand why nobody else has managed making decent touchpads. Is it not extremely high priority??

xnyan 3y ago
I worked at an electronics retailer in high school for a couple years, my job was to sell laptops. I sold a lot of laptops. Nerds like us who post comments on hacker news can have a hard time understanding the mind of the vast majority of regular people who simply could not care less about trackpad quality. It's just not a thing most people even think about.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  Most people don't care about 'drive shaft quality' or 'steering wheel quality' in their cars either, but you can be sure it will be taken good care of by engineering, and subconsciously noticed.
  - GeneralAntilles 3y ago
    There's truth in your point. People do feel the difference even when they don't notice it, but it doesn't seem like that's always (or even often?) reflected in the bottom line. Nissan sells an awful lot of cars with their crappy CVT transmissions and crossovers continue to be hugely popular in the US.
    - numpad0 3y ago
      People notice in subconscious but rarely in the wallet.
- dagmx 3y ago
  If I may, I’d make a slight modification to your statement. The vast majority of people don’t care about trackpad quality when it comes to shopping. They do care when they *use* it but they either take it for granted when it works well, or it’s too small a papercut to trade in their device and buy/research a new one. but it all combines together to make a smoother experience when using it, and it can convert people as a part of a whole.
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    The vast majority of people don’t care enough to pay for it. This is why people balk at the price of Apple Vision even though Apple managed to miniaturize a Macbook into a visor and added LiDAR, two 4K screens, a separate depth sensor, several other cameras, and even a 3D camera to it That said, Mark’s devices aren’t bad for the price. They’ve been the best overall VR headsets for the past 2-3 years.
  - bodge5000 3y ago
    > or it’s too small a papercut to trade in their device and buy/research a new one. Most of the time they don't notice at all unless its truly atrocious or truly mind blowing (and whilst I can firmly say the macbook trackpad is the best I've ever used, lets be honest its not mind blowing). They might notice things don't feel as smooth as it did on their macbook (assuming they even had one last, if not how can you tell something is worse if its all you've ever had), but they're unlikely to narrow this down to the trackpad.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    Yes, they buy bottom of the barrel and, if it doesn’t work, assume that is where state of the art is. Few months back I’ve seen anecdotal posts somewhere that new generations of managers are trying to shift computing to phones and tablets because they’re “better than laptops”. No one enforces a delightfulness standard for Windows laptops, and it is creating a skewed perception.
    - throw9away6 3y ago
      I’m surprised we don’t have that yet. Your iPhone would make an excellent Citrix client just dock and wait for your text to show up as you type.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  I think the average person does care about and notice quality, its just a question of if they can afford it. When I look around the coworking space, its almost universally macbooks. And these aren't tech people mostly. But the uni student with a budget that only buys half a macbook doesn't get to care about trackpad quality. Normal people don't say things like "The trackpad is unresponsive and the wifi drivers unreliable" They say "I just don't like it" "It feels kinda crap"
- SanjayMehta 3y ago
  With lowcost laptops I've noticed that most users end up using a mouse instead of the trackpad.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
emehex 3y ago
My guess would be... patents? (Apple's got all the good ones?)
- hedora 3y ago
  Apple did manage to patent the pythagorean theorem (“pinch zoom” uses the hypotenuse of a right triangle as the zoom factor), but, from what I can tell, the bad windows touchpad thing is self-inflicted.
makeitdouble 3y ago
I was confused by "touchpad", I assume it's the trackpad ? More extensive touch support, like having touch support on the laptop display alleviates a lot of the trackpad needs. It's still nice when it smooth and responsive, but looking at the the Surface devices for instance, it's nice enough.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kitsunesoba 3y ago
What boggled my mind were the trackpads on some laptops that weren't just average, but actively bad. The worst by far I've ever used was on a circa-2007 HP convertible laptop that ran Vista. Despite it costing more than some models of MacBook at the time, the thing was built with that cheap creaky "fake metal" glossy plastic, and that included its trackpad. The trackpad would've been bad enough just like that with the smooth plastic gripping at your fingertips, but to make it worse its surface had inverse dimples, and because its touch sensitivity wasn't all that sensitive you had to apply more pressure when using it which pressed your fingers down into the dimples and made them stick even worse. Oh and of course, as was customary for non-Apple laptops at that point it was also tiny. It's almost as if it was someone's job to make that thing's trackpad terrible to use. Just mind boggling.
- Gunnerhead 3y ago
  Oh God, the dimples. Or the textured trackpads that felt nothing short of sandpaper.
hedora 3y ago
Windows led to a few market failures like this. One that comes to mind is high DPI displays. In terms of pixels per inch, today’s 1080p displays are laughable by 2001 standards. It has been a quarter century since high DPI CRTs were affordable, and 20+ years since LCDs were. However, Windows wasn’t compatible with such things until at least 2010, so here we are a quarter century later, and laptop lines still often only offer meh-for-the-late-90’s displays. A more recent example is suspend resume. I’m not sure of the details, but I am sure that intel will never do better than S3 sleep from ten years ago, and Microsoft pushed them to change how sleep works.
blooalien 3y ago
I've been really pleased by the touchpads on Valve's Steam Controller, but they don't sell the Steam Controller anymore. :(
- LynxInLA 3y ago
  They seem to have used them on the Steam Deck, so maybe they'll use them again in future projects.
  - blooalien 3y ago
    Here's hoping and wishing for a "Steam Controller 2". Fingers crossed.
lazycouchpotato 3y ago
It's certainly improved over the past few years to a point where they're comparable to Macbooks. Windows Precision drivers and large glass trackpads are slowly becoming common in mid to high tier Windows laptops.
stocknoob 3y ago
Dell, HP and the enterprises that buy them don’t really care about UX.
sebzim4500 3y ago
I have an XPS 15, the touchpad is fine. When I use a macbook I don't think "oh my god the touchpad is great", although that might just be because I'm too busy thinking "oh my god this OS is terrible".
- ctvo 3y ago
  The touchpad is mostly fine now though you could argue Apple laptops are still more responsive. It wasn't always the case.
- 12345hn6789 3y ago
  Why does every comment chain devolve into this(although you admitted it)? Apple touch pads are an improvement over all other laptop brand touchpads. But then this fallacy is the only response. "These rounded corners in the UI really make me not care about the touch pad" "I wish I could care about touchpads, my ssd won't replace itself without a soldering iron though!" "They have touchpads? I use a mouse" Great. Apple touchpads are next generation compared to most other laptops.

livinglist 3y ago

Speaking of trackpad, I have never touched a mouse ever again since I started using Mac and it’s been 7 years now.

gnicholas 3y ago
I use my MBA in clamshell mode, but with an Apple trackpad. I used a mouse with my work PC when I was a lawyer, and I did enjoy having various buttons for open-in-new-tab, back/forward, right-click. But it seems like this is all easily accomplished with gestures on Apple's trackpads, plus scrolling is easier.

armitron 3y ago

Exactly, if Meta sticks with snapdragon+android, it's game over for them. If you've been following John Carmack, one constant theme in his posts while still working there was his dissatisfaction with the underlying stack (Os+Hw) and not pushing the envelope hard enough. Apple has a huge advantage with its vertical integration and nearly complete control of the entire stack. Android being a janky/buggy/glitchy mess is the icing on the cake.

kasrsf 3y ago
Carmack also pushed for more affordable headsets to increase adoption of the technology. imo it is a technological marvel but the size of the demographic willing to spend $4k on a headset with no proven long term value is quite small.

makeitdouble 3y ago

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. Is Microsoft today in a fundamentally problematic position ? Apple has the spotlight and a higher evaluation, but I'm not sure Google or Microsoft "haven't ended well". > A personal device like these headsets needs to be delightful. The number of people willing to pay for "delightful" is pretty small though. Even as today, the iPhone isn't winning on delight, it's primarily on the ecosystem, green bubbles, game payments etc., as we've heard in the numerous trials and hearings from Apple execs.

pico303 3y ago
Blackberry
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Blackberry was making their own hardware and OS to almost the same extent as Apple does today...are you arguing that Apple will be the next BlackBerry ?
  - hyuuu 3y ago
    I am sure people have said the same argument about Blackberry being the next <insert even older tech company here>
    - fomine3 3y ago
      IBM!DEC!
  - mdasen 3y ago
    I'm not the same poster (and hate the one-word answers with nothing to back them up), but I think BlackBerry's position could be called similar to Meta's. They were already established with lower-cost, lower-spec'd devices. However, BlackBerry couldn't conceive of how more would be transformative. They insisted that the iPhone would flop because it didn't have a keyboard and such. When you said that the iPhone wasn't succeeding today based on delight, I'd argue that it's the only reason the iPhone succeeded. BlackBerry had an amazing brand and the ecosystem that you say it the reason the iPhone is successful today - including its own proprietary messenger service. The iPhone came along with delight and overthrew the established players. If the Vision Pro offers users an experience that they like, it could make the Quest series look like BlackBerries: low-rent devices that were bought as toys for enthusiasts before real devices came along. The thing about the iPhone is that people could instantly see what they'd enjoy it for. BlackBerries were a status symbol, had some business use cases, and were a nice toy for those who tried to buy distractions. When Apple introduced the iPhone, they showed real web browsing, useful maps (even before GPS), a better iPod than they'd ever seen, YouTube, and more. With the Vision Pro, Apple is showing me something I could see myself using. I could wear it writing code and have more display space than 3 displays (and still use my keyboard). I could watch movies, I could browse the web, and I could play games. Apple is showing me how it could become an integral part of my usage rather than just a gadget that I'm likely to ignore. I'm not an expert on the VR/AR space, but it sounds like the Quest devices don't really have the resolution for reading text comfortably which cuts out a lot of usage - just as the BlackBerry devices didn't have good web browsing and other stuff. That could leave the Quest series in the BlackBerry zone where they're trying to fill a similar niche, but they're limited in the things that bring users back to the device rather than it sitting in a corner unused. It also seems like the Vision Pro is likely to be a lot more responsive. Android tends to have a lot of input lag compared to iOS and Apple's M2 processor will run circles around the Qualcomm XR2 in the Quest Pro - plus Apple has a dedicated R1 processor for handling real-time sensor data. The XR2 has one performance core from 3 years ago compared to 4 performance cores in an M2. Meta can't even buy themselves a CPU that's competitive. Apple's M2 will be 40-50% faster on single-core stuff and it has 4 performance cores instead of 1 performance core in the top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. On multi-core, the M2 is twice as fast. Plus, it has its own dedicated processor for handling all the sensor data! When BlackBerry saw the iPhone design, they assumed Apple couldn't pull it off. They thought practically the whole inside would have to be battery. They weren't wrong about that, but Apple did pull it off. Is Meta thinking that Apple won't be able to pull off a better experience than their devices? I don't think companies are underestimating Apple at the moment. Sometimes with tech, it's about getting over a hump. Everyone had been trying to do handheld computers since the 80s - even Apple's Newton development started in the 80s. Apple was the one who finally got it over the hump where it was really useful. Likewise, it's not like headsets are new - Nintendo's Virtual Boy came out in 1995, 28 years ago. But the Virtual Boy didn't get over that hump just as the Newton didn't. With the Quest, if I have to strain to read text, maybe it hasn't gotten over the hump. Again, I'm not an expert in this area, but my point is that it's not just about better specs for the sake of better specs. It's about better specs that overcome a barrier to usefulness. Things like latency and display clarity matter a lot when we're talking about a headset device. And if we want to attribute Apple's success to its ecosystem, the Vision Pro ties into that ecosystem. You can run apps on Vision Pro and use it as a display for your MacBook. I understand the things I can already do if I had a Vision Pro, not just as a gadget. The Vision Pro might still be a flop. It's expensive and it might not offer that much more when in the real world. However, the keynote was really impressive to me. It seemed like something I'd get after it had been out for 4 years - kinda like the iPhone. But we'll have to wait and see what happens.

nharada 3y ago

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position Isn't this what Android did? They seem like they're doing fine enough

veidr 3y ago
I believe OP is referring to how most Android phone vendors make no profits.
- zmmmmm 3y ago
  That's fine with him, he doesn't want to make profits from the hardware.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Most of the software profits are on IOS as well. I think you must know this, so I’m not sure what the angle is you’re playing.
    - pzo 3y ago
      But there is even much more profits with ads and sales in those apps - that is the biggest market than selling software. On android it's even hard to track how much profits is via subscription because platform is less restrictive and apple. And paid apps are slowly going away and are less relevant - it's been many years since mobile app peaked. Top apps these days in play store and app store are free.
    - zmmmmm 3y ago
      The difference here is Zuckerberg gets to be the equivalent of both Samsung and Google in the Android analogy. That's going to unlock far more opportunities for ecosystem profit than Android did when split b/w OEMs and Google.
ctvo 3y ago
> Isn't this what Android did? They seem like they're doing fine enough I don't think Meta's aspirations are to be Android. They were first movers in this space, spent billions and billions, only to be the less profitable, less coveted platform? As outsiders, this is already how we're looking at it when Apple stepped in, which is unfortunate, and why Mark's refusal to acknowledge reality isn't a great look.

oliwary 3y ago

I am not sure I agree. Meta can aim to be the android of the VR market, providing a decent product for much less money and being able to benefit from having much more devices out there. If VR becomes anywhere near as mainstream as phones at some point, meta will be very well placed to capture that position, which could be incredibly profitable.

gsatic 3y ago

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. I dont know man. Historically who has been in Mark's position with 10 Billion+ $$ to spend on any one thing?

nlitened 3y ago
Literally any too-big-to-fail company in history?

zmmmmm 3y ago

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position I think Zuckerberg would be elated if it plays out like iPhone vs Android.

bhouston 3y ago
Google Pixel devices likely are not making much money for Google. The value of Android for Google is in getting their software services everywhere. Zuckerberg is in a tough spot. Especially if Google uses its control of Android to push forward a VR version of it.

baby 3y ago

> The Quest uses an Android based operating system and a lot of off the shelf components. > We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. market share of android vs iOS in 2023: > Android 71.63 > iOS 27.71

bhouston 3y ago
“Thanks to its high average selling price and its healthy profit margins, Apple captured 50 percent of global smartphone revenues and more than 80 percent of the industry's profits in the first three months of 2023” https://www.statista.com/chart/29925/apples-share-of-the-global-smartphone-market/ https://www.statista.com/chart/29925/apples-share-of-the-glo... Apple is amazing at business. Hands down they are a phenomenal business. Destroying all other smartphone makers hands down.
- baby 3y ago
  Isn't this kind of the same as saying that LVMH is such a better company than Uniqlo? LVMH makes so much more money, but is it something I'm personally interested in or want to buy? That's a different question.
  - bhouston 3y ago
    > Isn't this kind of the same as saying that LVMH is such a better company than Uniqlo? Objectively from the perspective of capitalism, LVHM is a better business if it makes more money. That doesn't mean you have to like LVHM products more than Uniqlo. That is personal preference and different from a business perspective.
throw9away6 3y ago
Yeah but unit sold doesn’t matter much when apples units sell for 700 and android ones for 150
- shard 3y ago
  It matters when, in a world with only Apple, most of the world would still be using feature phones.

lanza 3y ago

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. Meta doesn't need to dominate the market. Being the Android to Apple's iOS or the Windows to Apple's macOS is way more than fine for Meta's business. iPhone's did $250b in revenue in 2022. Meta as a whole did $117b. They aren't looking to replace Apple, they are just trying to find a way to get their revenue growing again. It's a huge win in their eye's if Quest3 contributes reasonably well to bringing their 2023 revenue to about $130b. If there was a genuine third company competing with Meta then that would be a problem for them. Valve and Pico are roughly 0% the size of Meta and Apple. They just won't have the resources to actually compete. Google has been rumored to be working on a headset. If that's the case and they didn't fire that entire org then that would be Meta's only real competition for second place.

MaxikCZ 3y ago
> They aren't looking to replace Apple, they are just trying to find a way to get their revenue growing again. Thats like "they arent trying to be the best, they are just trying to be a little better. Ofc they are trying to beat apple, and everyone else. Or you are saing that if they were magically given the opportunity to become most valued company, theyd simply pass with "no thanks, thats more than we want" attitude? Every major corporation is trying their absolute hardest to grow.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  They're developing completely different products. Apple's product is a productivity enhancing tool, the main use case is a mobile desk so that you can use your computer anywhere in the world and the monitor setup is always exactly the way you want. Meta is going for the console market. The type of product kids get for christmas.
  - ctvo 3y ago
    > Apple's product is a productivity enhancing tool, the main use case is a mobile desk so that you can use your computer anywhere in the world and the monitor setup is always exactly the way you want. Apple's initial use cases are around work, entertainment, and meetings. It's ridiculous to think they won't expand this and compete in every use case once they get market shares and a developer eco-system. They are not different products. That's like saying a MacBook Pro and a HP laptop are different products. No, one is a high-end, more expensive, more coveted product, and the other isn't.