3 ms·

Honestly, this is a shame, because I think a lot of the vision pro's flaws are Apple problems. That said, meta seems to have found a sweet spot in price/perfor

by wrsh07 2y ago

Honestly, this is a shame, because I think a lot of the vision pro's flaws are Apple problems. That said, meta seems to have found a sweet spot in price/performance, so maybe in a few generations we will have something with the quality of vision pro that is not locked down

spacemadness 2y ago
I still can’t believe they expected people to be excited about a floating iPad OS UX as the main experience.
- threeseed 2y ago
  It is just a launcher for your applications. The main experience are the apps just like on every other device.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Saying this is like the most anti-Apple thing ever. It literally sounds like Microsoft when they were designing Windows and when Apple started eating their market share away because they cared about the little details
asadotzler 2y ago
It's not a sweet spot. It's less then 10 million MAU over 5 years for about $40 billion dollars. How is that a sweet spot. If you can't get 10 million MAUs in 5 years for $40 billion dollars, you're a failure. Quest is a failure. AVP being an even bigger failure doesn't make Quest a success.
- hollerith 2y ago
  MAU == monthly active users.
- wrsh07 2y ago
  What is the goal of quest? Is it to get mau? Is it sales and marketing for eng (come work at _, where we have fun projects like these Glasses - sounds familiar), is it to develop and flex hardware muscles? Is it to make sure Meta is competitive if/when there is a paradigm shift away from mobile? I think Mark is thrilled to have a hardware product that they can deploy their ML models to. Was that intentional? Obviously no, but at some point they're paying for optionality. They want the option to build a million hardware units in a year, they want the option to build a competitor to Apple's next hardware device (frankly, in the counterfactual that AVP took off, Meta was extremely well-positioned) Meta is a money-printing machine, and so they have choices: invest in moonshot hardware (or ai) projects, stock buybacks/dividends They have a huge dividend. What do you want them to do? More stock buybacks? Make less money?
- wrsh07 2y ago
  One thing that frustrates me with this comment is that you're measuring their state today as if that's the end state. Is waymo a failure? It's not deployed across the US yet, and it's been over a decade etc No, they're just trying to solve hard technology problems. I want companies to be ambitious, that's way better than seeing them just focus on cutting costs etc
ingenieros 2y ago
This so called “sweet spot” comes at the cost of billions of dollars in operating losses and layoffs at Reality Labs year after year. The worst part is that Meta is merely licensing the Ray-Ban form factor and this also comes at a hefty price tag. Specially if other companies such as Google enter a bidding war to snatch that exclusivity away from them. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/07/31/metas-reality-labs-posts-4point5-billion-loss-in-second-quarter.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/07/31/metas-reality-labs-posts... https://www.androidauthority.com/google-steal-ray-ban-meta-maker-gemini-glasses-3462619/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-steal-ray-ban-meta-m...
- wrsh07 2y ago
  > This so called “sweet spot” comes at the cost of billions of dollars in operating losses and layoffs at Reality Labs year after year Yes, it has cost them billions of dollars (ongoing) to develop their AR/VR tech. You can definitely criticize that, but this spending is defensive. If Facebook (Meta) doesn't own at least some market share in a future device, that is an existential threat to them. How much did ATT cost Facebook? [1] Answer: north of $10 billion in 2022. But note: it's actually a reduction in Facebook's revenue by that amount, so in the fullness of time, the total damage is much worse. > Ray-Ban Facebook has multiple form factors. They have VR quest (3). They have AR glasses. I don't expect Ray-Ban to capture Facebook/Google's margin here, and Facebook would be able to build first party AR glasses if they wanted. You use Ray-Ban to sell v1 and then you make v2 good enough that it sells itself. All of this seems tangential to my complaint that I would love an incredibly high res and reasonably hackable VR screen. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2022/04/23/apple-just-issued-stunning-12-billion-blow-to-facebook/# https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2022/04/23/appl...
  - ingenieros 2y ago
    Point taken! I would only add that Ray-Bans have become somewhat of a timeless fashion icon and this isn't something that you can easily replicate no matter how much R&D money you have at your disposal. (Just look at how goofy Snap's Spectacles are in comparison)

by wrsh07 2y ago

spacemadness 2y ago

I still can’t believe they expected people to be excited about a floating iPad OS UX as the main experience.

threeseed 2y ago
It is just a launcher for your applications. The main experience are the apps just like on every other device.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Saying this is like the most anti-Apple thing ever. It literally sounds like Microsoft when they were designing Windows and when Apple started eating their market share away because they cared about the little details

asadotzler 2y ago

It's not a sweet spot. It's less then 10 million MAU over 5 years for about $40 billion dollars. How is that a sweet spot. If you can't get 10 million MAUs in 5 years for $40 billion dollars, you're a failure. Quest is a failure. AVP being an even bigger failure doesn't make Quest a success.

hollerith 2y ago
MAU == monthly active users.
wrsh07 2y ago
What is the goal of quest? Is it to get mau? Is it sales and marketing for eng (come work at _, where we have fun projects like these Glasses - sounds familiar), is it to develop and flex hardware muscles? Is it to make sure Meta is competitive if/when there is a paradigm shift away from mobile? I think Mark is thrilled to have a hardware product that they can deploy their ML models to. Was that intentional? Obviously no, but at some point they're paying for optionality. They want the option to build a million hardware units in a year, they want the option to build a competitor to Apple's next hardware device (frankly, in the counterfactual that AVP took off, Meta was extremely well-positioned) Meta is a money-printing machine, and so they have choices: invest in moonshot hardware (or ai) projects, stock buybacks/dividends They have a huge dividend. What do you want them to do? More stock buybacks? Make less money?
wrsh07 2y ago
One thing that frustrates me with this comment is that you're measuring their state today as if that's the end state. Is waymo a failure? It's not deployed across the US yet, and it's been over a decade etc No, they're just trying to solve hard technology problems. I want companies to be ambitious, that's way better than seeing them just focus on cutting costs etc

ingenieros 2y ago

This so called “sweet spot” comes at the cost of billions of dollars in operating losses and layoffs at Reality Labs year after year. The worst part is that Meta is merely licensing the Ray-Ban form factor and this also comes at a hefty price tag. Specially if other companies such as Google enter a bidding war to snatch that exclusivity away from them. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/07/31/metas-reality-labs-posts-4point5-billion-loss-in-second-quarter.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/07/31/metas-reality-labs-posts... https://www.androidauthority.com/google-steal-ray-ban-meta-maker-gemini-glasses-3462619/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-steal-ray-ban-meta-m...

wrsh07 2y ago
> This so called “sweet spot” comes at the cost of billions of dollars in operating losses and layoffs at Reality Labs year after year Yes, it has cost them billions of dollars (ongoing) to develop their AR/VR tech. You can definitely criticize that, but this spending is defensive. If Facebook (Meta) doesn't own at least some market share in a future device, that is an existential threat to them. How much did ATT cost Facebook? [1] Answer: north of $10 billion in 2022. But note: it's actually a reduction in Facebook's revenue by that amount, so in the fullness of time, the total damage is much worse. > Ray-Ban Facebook has multiple form factors. They have VR quest (3). They have AR glasses. I don't expect Ray-Ban to capture Facebook/Google's margin here, and Facebook would be able to build first party AR glasses if they wanted. You use Ray-Ban to sell v1 and then you make v2 good enough that it sells itself. All of this seems tangential to my complaint that I would love an incredibly high res and reasonably hackable VR screen. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2022/04/23/apple-just-issued-stunning-12-billion-blow-to-facebook/# https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2022/04/23/appl...
- ingenieros 2y ago
  Point taken! I would only add that Ray-Bans have become somewhat of a timeless fashion icon and this isn't something that you can easily replicate no matter how much R&D money you have at your disposal. (Just look at how goofy Snap's Spectacles are in comparison)