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I am not an Apple fanboy (I run Nix on x86 mostly, some Arm), but I actually think they've managed to get it completely right on this. There are a few key pie
by dmayle 3y ago
I am not an Apple fanboy (I run Nix on x86 mostly, some Arm), but I actually think they've managed to get it completely right on this. There are a few key pieces that I see as signs that this will eventually hit it out of the park. With that being said, I do believe this is a v1, but remember that the first iPhone was very much a v1 as well.. (I stayed out until the iPhone 3GS myself, and prefer Android phones nowadays). The signs:
1. The battery seems replaceable. I had an original Google Glass... after 2-3 hours of use you had to take it off your head and let it charge, meaning that you would never get used to always having it on. If people have to choose between having a useless hunk of heavy metal on their head, or not being able to use it while it recharges for a few hours, you have failed.
2. Making it AR-first and having that weird external display. Real life will intrude. Can you answer the door, turn off an appliance, do anything else, without having to pull something off of your head and unstrap some controllers from your hands? With the Apple model of handling things, you can pop out to real life without having to get in or out of using it. If you have to take it off, you're just a little bit less likely to put it back on.
3. Tapping your own fingers to click. This was something I brought up to FB/Meta when I was working there, but they decided not to use it. The only way you can give a tactile/haptic response to virtual items, is if there's also some sort of physical item. Tapping your own finger is the single easiest thing that makes sense. I hope that Apple adds future support for augmented 'props'. Imagine an empty artists palette (typically white plastic), that has virtual colors in swatches, or in a color wheel. You can tap on the physical palette to choose your color, to virtually mix the paints, etc.
- gonehome 3y agoTapping fingers to click is enabled on the current quest fwiw, it's just not the default since typically the default is to use controllers. The thing the quest is missing is eye tracking, I'd guess because of the cost - but that eye tracking is going to be a really big deal for good UX I think (along with the much better latency). Meta also has the issue that because they're targeting social (given what the company is) the value isn't really there unless all your friends have headsets too (outside of the gaming niche). This is really hard. Apple by focusing on the utility for an individual side steps this in a way where it's a lot easier to bootstrap imo, especially with the ability for them to rely on their existing platform.
- zmmmmm 3y ago> Tapping your own fingers to click. This was something I brought up to FB/Meta when I was working there, but they decided not to use it that's a bit of a confusing thing to say because that is exactly how you "click" in Quest when using hand tracking. What's different is the eye tracking and I'm guessing how good the Apple headset is at recognising the tap. But tap is how it does it.
- dmayle 3y agoWhen I originally brought it up, no one was interested in the idea. It looks like this was introduced about six months after I left (which is about 18 months after I first brought it up), so it looks like they changed their minds.
- zmmmmm 3y agoI wonder if the quality of hand tracking was too poor. I remember it was absolutely incredible how fast it improved. And now it's actually really usable - I see lots of comments about how much better Apple's is but I wonder if people actually used the latest version on the Quest Pro which has better cameras - it's pretty damn good now). Thanks for sharing, it's always interesting to hear these kind of anecdotes!