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I think it's still a couple of years out, but what about a little thought experiment: Let's say you had a pair of normal looking glasses that do everything that

I think it's still a couple of years out, but what about a little thought experiment: Let's say you had a pair of normal looking glasses that do everything that Vision Pro is doing now [1] and cost, say, 1500 USD. This would IMO be a no-brainer, as you can then augment any space and activity you want with having views into the digital world - for work, for hobbies, you name it. That would IMO be a mass market device on the level of today's smartphones. Now, the question is, how much worse can it be and still sell well? How good is good enough? How soon will we see the plastic iPhone 3G equivalent at half the price, 70% the weight and 150% the battery life? After listening to the first hand experiences I do think Apple is onto something here, and this could be the beginning of the next step, finally going beyond what Douglas Engelbart has already envisioned in terms of digital augmentation of our lifes (on which we're IMO only now getting to a full realisation, almost 60 years later). [1] listen to yesterday's Cortex podcast, they go over all the details after first hand experience, and it's quite interesting to say the least.

tsimionescu 3y ago
What makes you think it's possible, especially in just a couple of years, to have a laptop powerful enough to drive two 4k+ screens + cameras at the same time reduced to the weight and form factor of a pair of glasses? Phones, laptops, and tablets have all been fighting on weight vs compute power for years, and improvements are incremental year to year. I don't see any reason to imagine it's possible to reduce the size that much in the foreseeable future. Even with compromises like a separate battery, which is already extremely clunky. Not to mention, the illusion depends highly on having your regular vision blocked out completely and on having the screens at a very fixed position relative to your eyes. So, for the foreseeable future, the screens will have to stay well fixed to your face, even if in a more glasses-like form factor, and completely cover your eyes. Ski goggles are actually a better description of the best that can be done, not glasses.
- m_mueller 3y ago
  I'm not saying it's possible in a few years. My argument was: Such a device would definitely be mass market. So how much worse can it be and still be mass market. And I could see a consumer version of Vision Pro in a couple of years reaching that state, where they just make it a bit cheaper, lighter and smaller.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Everyone saying "just wait until this has been miniturized and made cheaper" as if Moores law wasn't already dead and buried and we've been burning billions chasing 1-2% per generation for several generations. There's one more doubling of computing power per square centimeter of die, MAXIMUM. Otherwise GPU prices wouldn't still be climbing.
  - m_mueller 3y ago
    as it turns out there is a lot of optimizations to be had besides feature size shrink. for a long while, both software and hardware were sustaining of the "free lunch" of Moore's law (as coined by Herb Sutter). With that fading away, there has been a lot of progress on the architecture side in the last couple of years, with AMD & Apple entering a previously stale desktop CPU market and mixing it up quite a bit, forcing Intel to also be competitive again. I think it will be quite a while until the train of improvement runs dry even when feature size will be stuck. Think about how inefficient today's software still is when compared to what e.g. the original Mac could do with its limited hardware.
Root_Denied 3y ago
Augmented Reality (AR, or I guess "spatial computing" now) has always been what I thought would push the whole thing over the edge, and not VR. The "killer app" for VR is immersive experiences - while there's a niche for them, and I think we'll see more and better iterations, I don't think it has the growth potential that AR does. The killer app for AR is the pair of glasses that pops up information as an overlay on the rest of the world. Directions? You get an arrow and line telling you where to go. Meet someone for lunch? Facial recognition tells you information about them - either recent social media posts if you're already connected or something like a public profile if you don't. Testing out a new recipe? It shows you step by step directions and floating video of the task you need to do right them. Watching a movie? Built in subtitles and tells you who the actors (or voice actors) are. Looking to buy a car? The AR headset gives you pricing information and stats for any car that you look at. I could keep going. Think combination of Ready Player One, any gadget spy movie, and a video game isekai. Menus that allow you to make notes for when you go to the store, calendar reminders popping up visually The potential for abuse of privacy is high, but the convenience factor and instant gratification probably mean that people will still adopt it in droves. Add in some kind of AI assistant that does a halfway decent job at anticipating the user's needs and it's a done deal. The main things holding back that kind of thing are battery tech and miniaturization. 2 hours isn't gonna cut it, and it needs to shrink to a more innocuous level before we get there, but that's the direction I see it going. That's probably also why these companies are working so hard at iterating, to get that first-mover advantage. If we do get there I pity anyone with photosensitivity issues or epilepsy. They're gonna have a rough time.
- djtango 3y ago
  Had to scroll down surprisingly far to find this comment. The iPhone moment for this space IMO is... the iPhone (sans phone) Imagine something of google glass form factor tethered to a personal computing device (the size of an iPhone) for external battery and CPU. Basically Iron Man glasses. IMO glasses that can do everything a phone can, with baked in Google Lens is already a killer feature. Imagine having everything in focus auto-translated while abroad. Once you get certain social features like both visualizing the same thing I think that will be the ChatGPT moment for the space.

tsimionescu 3y ago

What makes you think it's possible, especially in just a couple of years, to have a laptop powerful enough to drive two 4k+ screens + cameras at the same time reduced to the weight and form factor of a pair of glasses? Phones, laptops, and tablets have all been fighting on weight vs compute power for years, and improvements are incremental year to year. I don't see any reason to imagine it's possible to reduce the size that much in the foreseeable future. Even with compromises like a separate battery, which is already extremely clunky. Not to mention, the illusion depends highly on having your regular vision blocked out completely and on having the screens at a very fixed position relative to your eyes. So, for the foreseeable future, the screens will have to stay well fixed to your face, even if in a more glasses-like form factor, and completely cover your eyes. Ski goggles are actually a better description of the best that can be done, not glasses.

m_mueller 3y ago
I'm not saying it's possible in a few years. My argument was: Such a device would definitely be mass market. So how much worse can it be and still be mass market. And I could see a consumer version of Vision Pro in a couple of years reaching that state, where they just make it a bit cheaper, lighter and smaller.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Everyone saying "just wait until this has been miniturized and made cheaper" as if Moores law wasn't already dead and buried and we've been burning billions chasing 1-2% per generation for several generations. There's one more doubling of computing power per square centimeter of die, MAXIMUM. Otherwise GPU prices wouldn't still be climbing.
- m_mueller 3y ago
  as it turns out there is a lot of optimizations to be had besides feature size shrink. for a long while, both software and hardware were sustaining of the "free lunch" of Moore's law (as coined by Herb Sutter). With that fading away, there has been a lot of progress on the architecture side in the last couple of years, with AMD & Apple entering a previously stale desktop CPU market and mixing it up quite a bit, forcing Intel to also be competitive again. I think it will be quite a while until the train of improvement runs dry even when feature size will be stuck. Think about how inefficient today's software still is when compared to what e.g. the original Mac could do with its limited hardware.

Root_Denied 3y ago

Augmented Reality (AR, or I guess "spatial computing" now) has always been what I thought would push the whole thing over the edge, and not VR. The "killer app" for VR is immersive experiences - while there's a niche for them, and I think we'll see more and better iterations, I don't think it has the growth potential that AR does. The killer app for AR is the pair of glasses that pops up information as an overlay on the rest of the world. Directions? You get an arrow and line telling you where to go. Meet someone for lunch? Facial recognition tells you information about them - either recent social media posts if you're already connected or something like a public profile if you don't. Testing out a new recipe? It shows you step by step directions and floating video of the task you need to do right them. Watching a movie? Built in subtitles and tells you who the actors (or voice actors) are. Looking to buy a car? The AR headset gives you pricing information and stats for any car that you look at. I could keep going. Think combination of Ready Player One, any gadget spy movie, and a video game isekai. Menus that allow you to make notes for when you go to the store, calendar reminders popping up visually The potential for abuse of privacy is high, but the convenience factor and instant gratification probably mean that people will still adopt it in droves. Add in some kind of AI assistant that does a halfway decent job at anticipating the user's needs and it's a done deal. The main things holding back that kind of thing are battery tech and miniaturization. 2 hours isn't gonna cut it, and it needs to shrink to a more innocuous level before we get there, but that's the direction I see it going. That's probably also why these companies are working so hard at iterating, to get that first-mover advantage. If we do get there I pity anyone with photosensitivity issues or epilepsy. They're gonna have a rough time.

djtango 3y ago
Had to scroll down surprisingly far to find this comment. The iPhone moment for this space IMO is... the iPhone (sans phone) Imagine something of google glass form factor tethered to a personal computing device (the size of an iPhone) for external battery and CPU. Basically Iron Man glasses. IMO glasses that can do everything a phone can, with baked in Google Lens is already a killer feature. Imagine having everything in focus auto-translated while abroad. Once you get certain social features like both visualizing the same thing I think that will be the ChatGPT moment for the space.