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It feels like Apple has been very quiet about their approach in some of the future spaces (self-driving, VR/AR, AI) but then they suddenly burst out with someth

It feels like Apple has been very quiet about their approach in some of the future spaces (self-driving, VR/AR, AI) but then they suddenly burst out with something like Vision Pro. It seems like they are biding their time and avoiding the hype knowing that they don't need to get their first. If they can produce a superior product their brand will let them dominate those markets whenever they decide to release.

RyanHamilton 3y ago
What makes you think vision pro is dominating? Unlike iPhone etc it has no distinguishing feature I know of.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  Speaking as a VR enthusiast who has virtually no interest in it: The Vision Pro is an entirely new product relative to any other VR headset I know of. It offers a comprehensive set of computing features (discounting an App Store which has only really just started) that puts it roughly on par with something like iPad OS. I would say it dominates currently for VR headsets if that is what you're after, because it's basically your only option. Desktop computing in VR is possible with things like a Vive or an Index but the experience is entirely different, worse on every front, and is basically done as a workaround in case you need to operate your PC while in VR without taking off the headset. And of course, all of those headsets are (quite intelligent, but remain merely) displays: they require a fairly powerful computer to attach to. There are headsets that operate independently too, like Meta's offerings, but those are much, much, much more restrictive in terms of capability than the Vision Pro. My interest in VR is basically solely for gaming, so the Vision Pro for me is a complete miss and I have no plans to purchase one. That being said, in the realm of productivity VR, I'd say they are dominating in that they're the sole entrant to the market that I'm aware of and their offering is extremely compelling.
  - romeros 3y ago
    To paraphrase YC/Sama etc. If there is a small grouop of initial users who are obsessively using it and can't get enough of it. Then VP will work and be here to stay. If not, then it is not their time. So, the question is this. If you know anyone who actually got VP. Are they using it obsessively? I got occulus rift a while ago and so did many of my friends. We bought it but never really used it. Like probably a few times in a year to show friends.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      I don't know enough to really say anything with confidence, apart from that if Apple's track record is anything to go by, if any company can get VR-for-work right, I suspect it's them. Not my 10 but I suspect it will be a lot of people's.
    - elliotbnvl 3y ago
      I am.
      - dmarcos 3y ago
        What do you do with it? How often? Is it your first headset?
        elliotbnvl 3y ago
        Primarily using it for software development. I'm a web dev. I'm on day three of all-day usage (~8hrs, with breaks) and my experience has improved with each day, both in terms of comfort and as I get used to visionOS. I have 10 windows open in front of me right now, including my calendars, Slack, Messages, Spotify (in Safari), ChatGPT, a reference browser for documentation, and a few other odds and ends. My main front and center window is my 4k MacBook Pro 16" screen in 1080p (larger than that and the screen is too large for me or the text too small, but I prefer slightly larger text usually). I've also used it for reading, watching movies, and reminiscing over old photos. Something I don't think that has really been captured well in reviews is how incredible it is to look at life-size recreations of photos you took on your phone, even plain old 2D ones. There's something really special about seeing a photo at life-size scale wherever you want, even if you technically can achieve this with a massive projector. And that's to say nothing of the bittersweet nostalgic nature of spatial video / photos, which has, if anything, been profoundly understated. It is not my first headset. Previous to the AVP, I owned Quests 1, 2, and 3, and I experienced the Rift before that. I tried, hard, to work all day in each of the Quests as that was my primary use case for them, but flamed out after a couple of hours every time.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    It’s also got nearly the entire library of iPad apps available to it to tide users over until native alternatives appear, plus for many apps providing a native version is little more than ticking a box in Xcode on existing iOS projects. This might sound trivial but it determines how long the user is able to use the device exclusively without relying on their phone, computer, etc which is a major factor in it being used at all.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    There's only a slim chance of history repeating here, but the olds here may recall that in the early days of discrete graphics cards, particularly before 3D took over, there were a lot of people buying graphics cards for Serious Business Reasons but really in order to play games when off the clock. A graphics card could make your spreadsheets go faster, but that's not really why they bought them. It's plausible, however improbable, that a VR headset targeted at Serious Business Reasons could open doors that entertainment has not. And in particular, slightly unwieldy price points that can be rationalized a bit easier.
- jolt42 3y ago
  You can run your laptop and other apps with multiple screens as big and layed out where how you want while still having a usable (seeable) keyboard? Is the latency such that you don't get nauseous? Seems useful for productivity. Do other goggles have these feature, yes, but there's a difference between being a toy versus actually being as good/better than how I work now.
  - jolt42 3y ago
    I don't yet know if its as good/better, but it appears to be at least on the cusp.
rujkking 3y ago
Someone just noticed Apple’s decades old SOP. Watch the aggregate fumble about, fail over and over, then take the few ideas that survive rapid, aimless iteration attempts and add the last mile of polish. A decade of crappy Palm, WinCE, and easily forgotten Java based mobile devices came and went before iPhone. They know what software people refuse to accept; it’s the hardware experience that matters and they’ll wait until the hardware is there. Modern hardware is responsible for AI, more reliable networks, and the rest of modern compute. Has little to do with the bloated software stacks we git pull into the data center Edit: Also consider that Intel and Apple don’t just make a consumer device. They design an advanced manufacturing pipeline. The difference between print(“hello world”) and for index in array: print(contents of index) That’s the basis of their value and why they are propped up by government and why software focused startups will always just be pump and dump schemes.
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  Apple is the master of the second mover advantage. Let the existing companies burn money in R&D, but closely monitor how customers perceive their products. What pain points exist that the current companies haven't addressed? What are the pitfalls? The first mover advantage gives you a chance to get most of the market share, but with Apple's walled garden, they don't need the first mover advantage to do that.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Even when they didn’t have that garden. Look at the iPod. Other MP3 players existed, but flash media was too small. Other hard drive players existed, they were too big. And both had bad interfaces (by Apple standards). Apple didn’t show up until they could meet all their goals. They could have made a phone sooner, it wouldn’t have been the iPhone. They could have made a headset sooner, it wouldn’t be the Vision Pro. They set their standards for what’s necessary and wait to be able to deliver that. The first mover rarely wins in the long run.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Apple cooks the tech required for their vision behind closed doors. Then release it when it's ready by their standards. It's a bit like Debian*, but closed source. *: It's ready when it's ready.
gnicholas 3y ago
> If they can produce a superior product their brand will let them dominate those markets whenever they decide to release. I anticipate that Apple's Pro devices (iPhone, MacBooks) will have beefier hardware designed specifically for this use case. My guess is they will sell a much higher proportion of Pro iPhones as a result. They'll probably also sell a lot more new devices overall, contra the trend toward slower upgrade cycles. At the same time, I think third-party companies will find a way to do pretty decent on-device (and very good cloud-based) AI, so it will be a tradeoff in terms of speed and privacy. If you want the best speed and no data being shared with a cloud-based AI provider, the Pro devices will be aimed at you.
rchaud 3y ago
> It seems like they are biding their time and avoiding the hype knowing that they don't need to get their first This idea that Apple gets to things late to "perfect them" is an artifact of the iPod/iPhone era. Nothing Apple put out since then has met this bar. Apple does things low-key these days because it has to. Remember the Apple Maps fiasco? A few memes was all it took to send everyone scurrying back to GMaps for a decade.
- sigspec 3y ago
  Suggests what? SUGGESTS WHAT??? Apple must have got to him...
  - Traubenfuchs 3y ago
    His LLM crashed or the connection was lost and the bot just posted all that was generated so far.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    I edited it. That last incomplete sentence wasn't visible in the textarea element. I submitted it before checking.
- hinkley 3y ago
  iPad? Apple watch? Slim laptops (involving aircraft metallurgy tricks)? Apple's been accused of copycatting practically since the beginning. But if you only copycat, you don't typically last this long. They can always offshore somewhere cheaper if you stand still long enough.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    They are best in class for marketing though. Even chatgpt says they are the best company of all time at marketing.
    - Someone 3y ago
      And ChatGPT is the yardstick we measure things with nowadays? Also, AFAIK, it won’t say anything specific until you ask it a question, and the away you phrase that can hugely affect its reply. Even if it didn’t, its response still assumes (more or less) that the Internet is always right, and that is questionable.
seydor 3y ago
yet every review calls the vision Pro a "work in progress". I don't buy this I also wonder why they broke with their naming scheme ("Pro" is not the Pro of any smaller model)
- hinkley 3y ago
  I presume they have an SE model in mind for their second iteration. Maybe there's a mothballed project we don't know about, or maybe someone at Apple is tired of rebranding product lines and insisted on making space for both. Or maybe someone thinks they're managing expectations on price by putting Pro in the name, since it's on par with their other Pro products.
  - seydor 3y ago
    Looking forward to Vision Ultra Pro SE
    - hinkley 3y ago
      Undo! Undo!
- bombcar 3y ago
  The MacBook Pro was released in January of 2006, followed by the MacBook in May of 2006 (if Wikipedia is to be believed, but it matches my memory).
- astrange 3y ago
  The name Apple Vision was taken. https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/AppleVision_Display https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/AppleVision_Display
JohnFen 3y ago
Apple has always been aware that "first mover advantage" is largely bullshit. "The pioneers get all the arrows." The sweet spot is to be second or third to market.
- echelon 3y ago
  Patents, patents, patents. Arm yourself to the teeth to defend yourself from the trillion dollar companies. Spend a few thousand dollars to get provisionals. Then if your idea works and grows, file the full patents. Don't let the giants steal your blood, sweat, and tears finding the gradients.
  - kahmeal 3y ago
    The only real "trickle down" that actually exists, heh. Invent cool stuff, protect yourself from having it stolen, eventually give into the ridiculous sums the giants will throw at you and pivot with that to your next endeavor.

RyanHamilton 3y ago

What makes you think vision pro is dominating? Unlike iPhone etc it has no distinguishing feature I know of.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
Speaking as a VR enthusiast who has virtually no interest in it: The Vision Pro is an entirely new product relative to any other VR headset I know of. It offers a comprehensive set of computing features (discounting an App Store which has only really just started) that puts it roughly on par with something like iPad OS. I would say it dominates currently for VR headsets if that is what you're after, because it's basically your only option. Desktop computing in VR is possible with things like a Vive or an Index but the experience is entirely different, worse on every front, and is basically done as a workaround in case you need to operate your PC while in VR without taking off the headset. And of course, all of those headsets are (quite intelligent, but remain merely) displays: they require a fairly powerful computer to attach to. There are headsets that operate independently too, like Meta's offerings, but those are much, much, much more restrictive in terms of capability than the Vision Pro. My interest in VR is basically solely for gaming, so the Vision Pro for me is a complete miss and I have no plans to purchase one. That being said, in the realm of productivity VR, I'd say they are dominating in that they're the sole entrant to the market that I'm aware of and their offering is extremely compelling.
- romeros 3y ago
  To paraphrase YC/Sama etc. If there is a small grouop of initial users who are obsessively using it and can't get enough of it. Then VP will work and be here to stay. If not, then it is not their time. So, the question is this. If you know anyone who actually got VP. Are they using it obsessively? I got occulus rift a while ago and so did many of my friends. We bought it but never really used it. Like probably a few times in a year to show friends.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I don't know enough to really say anything with confidence, apart from that if Apple's track record is anything to go by, if any company can get VR-for-work right, I suspect it's them. Not my 10 but I suspect it will be a lot of people's.
  - elliotbnvl 3y ago
    I am.
    - dmarcos 3y ago
      What do you do with it? How often? Is it your first headset?
      - elliotbnvl 3y ago
        Primarily using it for software development. I'm a web dev. I'm on day three of all-day usage (~8hrs, with breaks) and my experience has improved with each day, both in terms of comfort and as I get used to visionOS. I have 10 windows open in front of me right now, including my calendars, Slack, Messages, Spotify (in Safari), ChatGPT, a reference browser for documentation, and a few other odds and ends. My main front and center window is my 4k MacBook Pro 16" screen in 1080p (larger than that and the screen is too large for me or the text too small, but I prefer slightly larger text usually). I've also used it for reading, watching movies, and reminiscing over old photos. Something I don't think that has really been captured well in reviews is how incredible it is to look at life-size recreations of photos you took on your phone, even plain old 2D ones. There's something really special about seeing a photo at life-size scale wherever you want, even if you technically can achieve this with a massive projector. And that's to say nothing of the bittersweet nostalgic nature of spatial video / photos, which has, if anything, been profoundly understated. It is not my first headset. Previous to the AVP, I owned Quests 1, 2, and 3, and I experienced the Rift before that. I tried, hard, to work all day in each of the Quests as that was my primary use case for them, but flamed out after a couple of hours every time.
- jwells89 3y ago
  It’s also got nearly the entire library of iPad apps available to it to tide users over until native alternatives appear, plus for many apps providing a native version is little more than ticking a box in Xcode on existing iOS projects. This might sound trivial but it determines how long the user is able to use the device exclusively without relying on their phone, computer, etc which is a major factor in it being used at all.
- hinkley 3y ago
  There's only a slim chance of history repeating here, but the olds here may recall that in the early days of discrete graphics cards, particularly before 3D took over, there were a lot of people buying graphics cards for Serious Business Reasons but really in order to play games when off the clock. A graphics card could make your spreadsheets go faster, but that's not really why they bought them. It's plausible, however improbable, that a VR headset targeted at Serious Business Reasons could open doors that entertainment has not. And in particular, slightly unwieldy price points that can be rationalized a bit easier.
jolt42 3y ago
You can run your laptop and other apps with multiple screens as big and layed out where how you want while still having a usable (seeable) keyboard? Is the latency such that you don't get nauseous? Seems useful for productivity. Do other goggles have these feature, yes, but there's a difference between being a toy versus actually being as good/better than how I work now.
- jolt42 3y ago
  I don't yet know if its as good/better, but it appears to be at least on the cusp.

rujkking 3y ago

Someone just noticed Apple’s decades old SOP. Watch the aggregate fumble about, fail over and over, then take the few ideas that survive rapid, aimless iteration attempts and add the last mile of polish. A decade of crappy Palm, WinCE, and easily forgotten Java based mobile devices came and went before iPhone. They know what software people refuse to accept; it’s the hardware experience that matters and they’ll wait until the hardware is there. Modern hardware is responsible for AI, more reliable networks, and the rest of modern compute. Has little to do with the bloated software stacks we git pull into the data center Edit: Also consider that Intel and Apple don’t just make a consumer device. They design an advanced manufacturing pipeline. The difference between print(“hello world”) and for index in array: print(contents of index) That’s the basis of their value and why they are propped up by government and why software focused startups will always just be pump and dump schemes.

theturtletalks 3y ago
Apple is the master of the second mover advantage. Let the existing companies burn money in R&D, but closely monitor how customers perceive their products. What pain points exist that the current companies haven't addressed? What are the pitfalls? The first mover advantage gives you a chance to get most of the market share, but with Apple's walled garden, they don't need the first mover advantage to do that.
- MBCook 3y ago
  Even when they didn’t have that garden. Look at the iPod. Other MP3 players existed, but flash media was too small. Other hard drive players existed, they were too big. And both had bad interfaces (by Apple standards). Apple didn’t show up until they could meet all their goals. They could have made a phone sooner, it wouldn’t have been the iPhone. They could have made a headset sooner, it wouldn’t be the Vision Pro. They set their standards for what’s necessary and wait to be able to deliver that. The first mover rarely wins in the long run.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Apple cooks the tech required for their vision behind closed doors. Then release it when it's ready by their standards. It's a bit like Debian*, but closed source. *: It's ready when it's ready.

gnicholas 3y ago

> If they can produce a superior product their brand will let them dominate those markets whenever they decide to release. I anticipate that Apple's Pro devices (iPhone, MacBooks) will have beefier hardware designed specifically for this use case. My guess is they will sell a much higher proportion of Pro iPhones as a result. They'll probably also sell a lot more new devices overall, contra the trend toward slower upgrade cycles. At the same time, I think third-party companies will find a way to do pretty decent on-device (and very good cloud-based) AI, so it will be a tradeoff in terms of speed and privacy. If you want the best speed and no data being shared with a cloud-based AI provider, the Pro devices will be aimed at you.

rchaud 3y ago

> It seems like they are biding their time and avoiding the hype knowing that they don't need to get their first This idea that Apple gets to things late to "perfect them" is an artifact of the iPod/iPhone era. Nothing Apple put out since then has met this bar. Apple does things low-key these days because it has to. Remember the Apple Maps fiasco? A few memes was all it took to send everyone scurrying back to GMaps for a decade.

sigspec 3y ago
Suggests what? SUGGESTS WHAT??? Apple must have got to him...
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  His LLM crashed or the connection was lost and the bot just posted all that was generated so far.
- rchaud 3y ago
  I edited it. That last incomplete sentence wasn't visible in the textarea element. I submitted it before checking.
hinkley 3y ago
iPad? Apple watch? Slim laptops (involving aircraft metallurgy tricks)? Apple's been accused of copycatting practically since the beginning. But if you only copycat, you don't typically last this long. They can always offshore somewhere cheaper if you stand still long enough.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  They are best in class for marketing though. Even chatgpt says they are the best company of all time at marketing.
  - Someone 3y ago
    And ChatGPT is the yardstick we measure things with nowadays? Also, AFAIK, it won’t say anything specific until you ask it a question, and the away you phrase that can hugely affect its reply. Even if it didn’t, its response still assumes (more or less) that the Internet is always right, and that is questionable.

seydor 3y ago

yet every review calls the vision Pro a "work in progress". I don't buy this I also wonder why they broke with their naming scheme ("Pro" is not the Pro of any smaller model)

hinkley 3y ago
I presume they have an SE model in mind for their second iteration. Maybe there's a mothballed project we don't know about, or maybe someone at Apple is tired of rebranding product lines and insisted on making space for both. Or maybe someone thinks they're managing expectations on price by putting Pro in the name, since it's on par with their other Pro products.
- seydor 3y ago
  Looking forward to Vision Ultra Pro SE
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Undo! Undo!
bombcar 3y ago
The MacBook Pro was released in January of 2006, followed by the MacBook in May of 2006 (if Wikipedia is to be believed, but it matches my memory).
astrange 3y ago
The name Apple Vision was taken. https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/AppleVision_Display https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/AppleVision_Display

JohnFen 3y ago

Apple has always been aware that "first mover advantage" is largely bullshit. "The pioneers get all the arrows." The sweet spot is to be second or third to market.

echelon 3y ago
Patents, patents, patents. Arm yourself to the teeth to defend yourself from the trillion dollar companies. Spend a few thousand dollars to get provisionals. Then if your idea works and grows, file the full patents. Don't let the giants steal your blood, sweat, and tears finding the gradients.
- kahmeal 3y ago
  The only real "trickle down" that actually exists, heh. Invent cool stuff, protect yourself from having it stolen, eventually give into the ridiculous sums the giants will throw at you and pivot with that to your next endeavor.