6 ms·

I wonder why Apple didn't go for glasses instead like the ones Meta is doing recently; a less bulky and cheaper product would have probably sold more.

matrix2003 2y ago
I would assume they said their market research said otherwise. Personally, I have 0 interest in glasses, but a lot in quality, privacy respecting VR. Just not $3500 of it. I would have been interested in a $3500 headset if that M1 chip had run macOS, so I could ditch my laptop on trips and take my office with me.
- aldarisbm 2y ago
  100%, if it run macos it would've been a no brainer. I believe I am decent earner, but 3500$ is not justifiable from the benefit I get from it. _and I wanted to buy it really bad_
- joshstrange 2y ago
  I agree that the OS is the most limiting factor of the AVP. In its current form it's just an iPad with all the downsides that brings. I had high hopes for it as a MBP replacement or companion but MVD was disappointing and so I returned mine.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Were you planning on bringing a keyboard and mouse around with you? VR "gesture" controls are godawful and nothing has supplanted mouse and keyboard because they are absolutely wonderful control methods. If you ARE carrying around a mouse and keyboard and AVP, that seems like a lot more clunk and silliness than just using a damn laptop. What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face? I want to be explicit: I love VR and have been hugely into it since the very first oculus dev kits, but other than flight/driving simulators and gun games which all hugely hugely benefit from the physical immersion VR provides, there is nothing worth doing in VR. Not that many games actually benefit from a physical presence. Almost nobody playing FIFA or CoD actually wants to do it in VR. The (really fun and quite well made) CoD ripoffs and other shooters in VR are nearly empty, because so few people are willing to stand up while playing. The Wii made this clear 18 years ago FFS. I'm still waiting for a single use case that isn't sim driving, sim flying, or shooting, or beat saber. Billions invested into producing something, and still there is nothing.
    - ashildr 2y ago
      > What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face? For a start you get multiple very large virtual screens that are a lot bigger than the screen in a notebook. This to me is an interesting use case.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        Have you actually tried that though? People always bring this up like it's some cyberpunk fantasy but working with a one pound weight strapped to your face is awful and staring at screens situation an inch from your eyes is really really hard on them and absolutely sucks. I bet using VR for 8 hours a day would actually hurt your eyes. Actual VR/AR desktop mirroring is a thing that exists now. It's a niche of a niche of a niche because it's not a good experience. It's interesting for the five minutes until it becomes unbearable. Consider that many simracers, the niche that VR is the absolute best for, do not regularly use VR, because it's just too much fuss to put a damn set of goggles on, even when you are already sat in a purpose built simracing rig!
    - joshstrange 2y ago
      > Were you planning on bringing a keyboard and mouse around with you? VR "gesture" controls are godawful and nothing has supplanted mouse and keyboard because they are absolutely wonderful control methods. Yes, either external or the ones built into my MBP > If you ARE carrying around a mouse and keyboard and AVP, that seems like a lot more clunk and silliness than just using a damn laptop. What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face? I was hoping to use it as a companion (replacement was always "maybe in the future") initially so I was going to carry the AVP+MBP if things had worked out. Not always, but if I was going to be somewhere for an extended period of time (vacation/visiting friends or family/etc) then I would take both and have the "same setup" that I have at my desk at home (AVP+MBP). This was going to be an alternative to my 3-4 monitors (I have the same desk setup in 2 locations and duplicating everything was expensive and annoying). Unfortunately the MVD was too blurry and VR is too limiting (but mosting the MVD issues) so I returned my headset but that's what I was hoping to accomplish and how I was going to use it all.
- EGreg 2y ago
  Whether it's VR, "Metaverse", or AI models, I want it to be open source. I don't want to spend 8 hours a day in some corporation's world, even more than we already are. The incentives are not aligned. The personal computer revolution (that Apple helped kickstart) was amazing. People could actually run the software locally, instead of a mainframe. People bought apps to run on their computer and videos to run on their own VCR. I feel like the Web started taking things backwards, empowering "the remote server" again, like a mainframe. Now, we have Netflix, YouTube etc. and the broadband internet hurdle has been surmounted for many. We are fighting the wrong battles with "net neutrality". The real battle should be whether we can host the software on machines of our choice, or not.
  - dartos 2y ago
    > The real battle should be whether we can host the software on machines of our choice, or not. Evidently there is a market for those who want to run their own software and those who don’t care. Apple caters to the latter. Meta seems to be taking the more open route. Luckily pretty much all major VR platforms use OpenXR, so we have a better start than in the past.
    - EGreg 2y ago
      When it comes to AI, yes you guys are lucky Meta had that snafu with LLaMa researchers and chose to seize the moment and make LLaMa available freely to everyone. Otherwise it would be quite a different world. Mark Z returned to his open-source roots that he had with Synapse and Wirehog back in the day, before Sean Parker and Peter Thiel “corrupted” him. But when it comes to everything else, it is the opposite, in my opinion. Apple sells you the hardware and you install apps locally. It’s not open source, but at least it runs locally. And Apple cares about your privacy. Facebook is the opposite, it is ad-supported, it will never give you their backend source code or let you run your own social network. They only promote “React” front end framework and other ancillary things. They will try to take your data by hook or by crook (surreptitiously recording your camera and audio as well). Their “Metaverse” play would have to recouo the tens of billions spent on development. But yeah when it comes to AI, you guys lucked out. Zuck’s image has improved since the first 15 years of “dumbf%[#s” giving him their data. He now surfs in a suit and looks much cooler. But remember — it’s people like Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, and all the “BDFL”s of all the languages you use (like Guido Vom Rossum for Python and the Zend guys behind PHP) who really create most of the wealth for the world. If not for open source, you’d be spending more and more of your life in some corporation’s world. Just ask yourself, when the following technologies enter your home or your body, would you rather all be hooked up to a corporation like the Borg, or at least have your own installation where you have a say: TeslaBot in your house Neuralink in your brain Microsoft Recall recording Hours in “the Metaverse” Security cameras everywhere What do you think the incentives will be for TeslaBot or Microsoft Recall surreptitiously storing everything they can about you, including your passwords? When facing the temptation. Microsoft has already done it. Facebook has already done it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism But it can go far beyond that. How difficult would it be for TeslaBot to get all the info to impersonate you? All your mannerisms, voice recordings, your heartbeat rhythms, gait, everything?
apwell23 2y ago
Meta glasses are not selling either. Meta's pathetic attempt to make them 'cool' by using raybans and European models is laughable.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- pavlov 2y ago
  The CEO of the Ray-Ban brand owner says otherwise: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/new-ray-ban-meta-glasses-have-outsold-previous-version-essilux-ceo-says-2024-07-16/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/n... Granted, it’s relative: “… the new generation of smart glasses have sold more in a few months than the old ones did in two years.” But it doesn’t sound like they’re discouraged.
  - rchaud 2y ago
    Translation: we sold almost nothing from the previous generation. If the product was a hit, we'd just know about it. We'd see it around, people would talk about it. It wouldn't require an ambiguous comment from the CEO.
  - apwell23 2y ago
    Thats like saying I improved my running speed last month more than Usain bolt did in a decade.
joshstrange 2y ago
That's the thing, Meta is /not/ "doing" glasses. They had a very limited run at $10K+/ea just for internal testing IIRC. That's very different from a shipping $3.5K product. It's also not clear if Meta could ship their glasses at ~$10K or if they'd need to charge even more. Apple has repeatedly said that AR is where they want to be and glasses are what they want to do (directly and via leaks) but the tech wasn't there yet. "There yet" can mean "we can't figure out how to get the cost down to something reasonable". The AVP was clearly a "Let's fake it till we make it" product with faux-AR (or maybe it's still just "AR" but faux-"glasses"?) with the end goal of removing the ski visor for just glasses.
- 7thpower 2y ago
  I think part of the challenge Apple now has is convincing developers who were already on the fence that they should take the plunge now rather than wait for what looks to be a clearly superior form factor. It’s not like customers (aside from those who already have the hardware) are beating down anyone’s door asking for the Vision Pro. This is very handwavy, but if Apple does intend to pursue the glasses form factor it would probably benefit them to do the very make the very un-apple move of articulating how investments into developing for Vision Pro will extend into glasses.
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    > make the very un-apple move of articulating how investments into developing for Vision Pro will extend into glasses I doubt they will come out and say that specifically but they pushed ARKit and VRKit for year prior to the AVP.
- butlike 2y ago
  I don't know, I just tested the Meta Quest last night and at $300 it looked GOOD. Give it a few years and I bet they could get that level of fidelity into a glass frame @ ~$1000-1200
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    Well the Meta Quest 2 starts $500 so I'm not sure if you were using a MQ2 or MQ3S (which has essentially the screens of the MQ2 from what I understand). I have tried the MQ2 (I own one) and I have tried the MQ3. The 3 is better but the resolution is still not great, the AVP was much better than either. I did like the color passthrough on the MQ3 (vs grayscale on the 2) but I wouldn't say any of it looked "GOOD", it was adequate but still too blurry. I think I'll end up getting a MQ3 eventually or maybe the next version at launch but I'm just not really drawn to VR. After the first few months of my MQ2 I lost interest and it's just collecting dust.
the_duke 2y ago
All the rumors always said they were working on both in parallel. I assume they could not yet make glasses happen in a way that fit their expectations or at a reasonable price point. Even the Vision Pro is a device with big trade-offs (external battery, crazy expensive).
JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
My guess is the Vision Pro was largely driven by a need to get real world data. By giving it all the bells and whistles they get to find out about more things and keep it at such a price range that it avoids being viewed as a colossal consumer level failure (instead if it's known by the general public at all it's as a weird but impressive premium level failure)
- FrojoS 2y ago
  It was driven by sunk cost fallacy.
akmarinov 2y ago
Apple 100% has something like Meta's Orion glasses or probably even better as a prototype in their basement. Instead of an Orion puck for processing - it's your iPhone Instead of the bracelet for extra precision - it's a future Apple Watch prototype. They just won't do what Meta did - show off prototype hardware that they know they won't release in its current form and are working towards making viable for mass production.

matrix2003 2y ago

I would assume they said their market research said otherwise. Personally, I have 0 interest in glasses, but a lot in quality, privacy respecting VR. Just not $3500 of it. I would have been interested in a $3500 headset if that M1 chip had run macOS, so I could ditch my laptop on trips and take my office with me.

aldarisbm 2y ago
100%, if it run macos it would've been a no brainer. I believe I am decent earner, but 3500$ is not justifiable from the benefit I get from it. _and I wanted to buy it really bad_
joshstrange 2y ago
I agree that the OS is the most limiting factor of the AVP. In its current form it's just an iPad with all the downsides that brings. I had high hopes for it as a MBP replacement or companion but MVD was disappointing and so I returned mine.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Were you planning on bringing a keyboard and mouse around with you? VR "gesture" controls are godawful and nothing has supplanted mouse and keyboard because they are absolutely wonderful control methods. If you ARE carrying around a mouse and keyboard and AVP, that seems like a lot more clunk and silliness than just using a damn laptop. What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face? I want to be explicit: I love VR and have been hugely into it since the very first oculus dev kits, but other than flight/driving simulators and gun games which all hugely hugely benefit from the physical immersion VR provides, there is nothing worth doing in VR. Not that many games actually benefit from a physical presence. Almost nobody playing FIFA or CoD actually wants to do it in VR. The (really fun and quite well made) CoD ripoffs and other shooters in VR are nearly empty, because so few people are willing to stand up while playing. The Wii made this clear 18 years ago FFS. I'm still waiting for a single use case that isn't sim driving, sim flying, or shooting, or beat saber. Billions invested into producing something, and still there is nothing.
  - ashildr 2y ago
    > What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face? For a start you get multiple very large virtual screens that are a lot bigger than the screen in a notebook. This to me is an interesting use case.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      Have you actually tried that though? People always bring this up like it's some cyberpunk fantasy but working with a one pound weight strapped to your face is awful and staring at screens situation an inch from your eyes is really really hard on them and absolutely sucks. I bet using VR for 8 hours a day would actually hurt your eyes. Actual VR/AR desktop mirroring is a thing that exists now. It's a niche of a niche of a niche because it's not a good experience. It's interesting for the five minutes until it becomes unbearable. Consider that many simracers, the niche that VR is the absolute best for, do not regularly use VR, because it's just too much fuss to put a damn set of goggles on, even when you are already sat in a purpose built simracing rig!
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    > Were you planning on bringing a keyboard and mouse around with you? VR "gesture" controls are godawful and nothing has supplanted mouse and keyboard because they are absolutely wonderful control methods. Yes, either external or the ones built into my MBP > If you ARE carrying around a mouse and keyboard and AVP, that seems like a lot more clunk and silliness than just using a damn laptop. What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face? I was hoping to use it as a companion (replacement was always "maybe in the future") initially so I was going to carry the AVP+MBP if things had worked out. Not always, but if I was going to be somewhere for an extended period of time (vacation/visiting friends or family/etc) then I would take both and have the "same setup" that I have at my desk at home (AVP+MBP). This was going to be an alternative to my 3-4 monitors (I have the same desk setup in 2 locations and duplicating everything was expensive and annoying). Unfortunately the MVD was too blurry and VR is too limiting (but mosting the MVD issues) so I returned my headset but that's what I was hoping to accomplish and how I was going to use it all.
EGreg 2y ago
Whether it's VR, "Metaverse", or AI models, I want it to be open source. I don't want to spend 8 hours a day in some corporation's world, even more than we already are. The incentives are not aligned. The personal computer revolution (that Apple helped kickstart) was amazing. People could actually run the software locally, instead of a mainframe. People bought apps to run on their computer and videos to run on their own VCR. I feel like the Web started taking things backwards, empowering "the remote server" again, like a mainframe. Now, we have Netflix, YouTube etc. and the broadband internet hurdle has been surmounted for many. We are fighting the wrong battles with "net neutrality". The real battle should be whether we can host the software on machines of our choice, or not.
- dartos 2y ago
  > The real battle should be whether we can host the software on machines of our choice, or not. Evidently there is a market for those who want to run their own software and those who don’t care. Apple caters to the latter. Meta seems to be taking the more open route. Luckily pretty much all major VR platforms use OpenXR, so we have a better start than in the past.
  - EGreg 2y ago
    When it comes to AI, yes you guys are lucky Meta had that snafu with LLaMa researchers and chose to seize the moment and make LLaMa available freely to everyone. Otherwise it would be quite a different world. Mark Z returned to his open-source roots that he had with Synapse and Wirehog back in the day, before Sean Parker and Peter Thiel “corrupted” him. But when it comes to everything else, it is the opposite, in my opinion. Apple sells you the hardware and you install apps locally. It’s not open source, but at least it runs locally. And Apple cares about your privacy. Facebook is the opposite, it is ad-supported, it will never give you their backend source code or let you run your own social network. They only promote “React” front end framework and other ancillary things. They will try to take your data by hook or by crook (surreptitiously recording your camera and audio as well). Their “Metaverse” play would have to recouo the tens of billions spent on development. But yeah when it comes to AI, you guys lucked out. Zuck’s image has improved since the first 15 years of “dumbf%[#s” giving him their data. He now surfs in a suit and looks much cooler. But remember — it’s people like Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, and all the “BDFL”s of all the languages you use (like Guido Vom Rossum for Python and the Zend guys behind PHP) who really create most of the wealth for the world. If not for open source, you’d be spending more and more of your life in some corporation’s world. Just ask yourself, when the following technologies enter your home or your body, would you rather all be hooked up to a corporation like the Borg, or at least have your own installation where you have a say: TeslaBot in your house Neuralink in your brain Microsoft Recall recording Hours in “the Metaverse” Security cameras everywhere What do you think the incentives will be for TeslaBot or Microsoft Recall surreptitiously storing everything they can about you, including your passwords? When facing the temptation. Microsoft has already done it. Facebook has already done it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism But it can go far beyond that. How difficult would it be for TeslaBot to get all the info to impersonate you? All your mannerisms, voice recordings, your heartbeat rhythms, gait, everything?

apwell23 2y ago

Meta glasses are not selling either. Meta's pathetic attempt to make them 'cool' by using raybans and European models is laughable.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pavlov 2y ago
The CEO of the Ray-Ban brand owner says otherwise: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/new-ray-ban-meta-glasses-have-outsold-previous-version-essilux-ceo-says-2024-07-16/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/n... Granted, it’s relative: “… the new generation of smart glasses have sold more in a few months than the old ones did in two years.” But it doesn’t sound like they’re discouraged.
- rchaud 2y ago
  Translation: we sold almost nothing from the previous generation. If the product was a hit, we'd just know about it. We'd see it around, people would talk about it. It wouldn't require an ambiguous comment from the CEO.
- apwell23 2y ago
  Thats like saying I improved my running speed last month more than Usain bolt did in a decade.

joshstrange 2y ago

That's the thing, Meta is /not/ "doing" glasses. They had a very limited run at $10K+/ea just for internal testing IIRC. That's very different from a shipping $3.5K product. It's also not clear if Meta could ship their glasses at ~$10K or if they'd need to charge even more. Apple has repeatedly said that AR is where they want to be and glasses are what they want to do (directly and via leaks) but the tech wasn't there yet. "There yet" can mean "we can't figure out how to get the cost down to something reasonable". The AVP was clearly a "Let's fake it till we make it" product with faux-AR (or maybe it's still just "AR" but faux-"glasses"?) with the end goal of removing the ski visor for just glasses.

7thpower 2y ago
I think part of the challenge Apple now has is convincing developers who were already on the fence that they should take the plunge now rather than wait for what looks to be a clearly superior form factor. It’s not like customers (aside from those who already have the hardware) are beating down anyone’s door asking for the Vision Pro. This is very handwavy, but if Apple does intend to pursue the glasses form factor it would probably benefit them to do the very make the very un-apple move of articulating how investments into developing for Vision Pro will extend into glasses.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  > make the very un-apple move of articulating how investments into developing for Vision Pro will extend into glasses I doubt they will come out and say that specifically but they pushed ARKit and VRKit for year prior to the AVP.
butlike 2y ago
I don't know, I just tested the Meta Quest last night and at $300 it looked GOOD. Give it a few years and I bet they could get that level of fidelity into a glass frame @ ~$1000-1200
- joshstrange 2y ago
  Well the Meta Quest 2 starts $500 so I'm not sure if you were using a MQ2 or MQ3S (which has essentially the screens of the MQ2 from what I understand). I have tried the MQ2 (I own one) and I have tried the MQ3. The 3 is better but the resolution is still not great, the AVP was much better than either. I did like the color passthrough on the MQ3 (vs grayscale on the 2) but I wouldn't say any of it looked "GOOD", it was adequate but still too blurry. I think I'll end up getting a MQ3 eventually or maybe the next version at launch but I'm just not really drawn to VR. After the first few months of my MQ2 I lost interest and it's just collecting dust.

the_duke 2y ago

All the rumors always said they were working on both in parallel. I assume they could not yet make glasses happen in a way that fit their expectations or at a reasonable price point. Even the Vision Pro is a device with big trade-offs (external battery, crazy expensive).

JansjoFromIkea 2y ago

My guess is the Vision Pro was largely driven by a need to get real world data. By giving it all the bells and whistles they get to find out about more things and keep it at such a price range that it avoids being viewed as a colossal consumer level failure (instead if it's known by the general public at all it's as a weird but impressive premium level failure)

FrojoS 2y ago
It was driven by sunk cost fallacy.

akmarinov 2y ago

Apple 100% has something like Meta's Orion glasses or probably even better as a prototype in their basement. Instead of an Orion puck for processing - it's your iPhone Instead of the bracelet for extra precision - it's a future Apple Watch prototype. They just won't do what Meta did - show off prototype hardware that they know they won't release in its current form and are working towards making viable for mass production.