Kinda doubt about Vision Pros' future.

[Night Spring]

You chose to buy multiple iPads instead of one laptop with multiple workspaces.

A laptop screen is about the same size as my iPad Pro, or only slightly bigger. If I want to see enough of multiple documents at once, at a size big enough for them to be legible and useful, I'd need to juggle multiple laptops.

And I'm also enjoying this conversation. We may have different views, but you express your viewpoint rationally and comprehensively, and I appreciate exchanging views with people who have different perspectives than mine.

 

[Avatar74]

I think the time could come when such virtual meetings could feel more satisfying than 2D Zoom/FaceTime meetings.

"satisfying" still doesn't tell me what problem is being solved, in large part because you're not telling me what itch is being satisfied, or which problem solved.

I manage teams in US, UK, India, and Europe, and I am on calls from 4am until 2pm. So I am genuinely interested but I can also give you a list a mile long of why I like some distance during meetings (it rhymes with "dull key asking").

The problem is that the virtual bodies can't do anything real with one another that I can't just drop into a chat without them seeing everything I am seeing (and I don't want them to)... Chartjunk is the habit of adding things into a visualization that don't improve the message, and using more CPU/GPU power to render all this extra stuff is the same thing.

The entire problem with skeumorphism is that it does the opposite of leveraging all that extra bandwidth, processor and memory to improve output and instead focuses resources on recreating all the things about reality that decrease our focus on the things that we need to discuss in a call... the same way that studies show a lot of time is wasted in open plan environments because people get distracted too easily.

 

[Avatar74]

A laptop screen is about the same size as my iPad Pro, or only slightly bigger. If I want to see enough of multiple documents at once, at a size big enough for them to be legible and useful, I'd need to juggle multiple laptops.

And I'm also enjoying this conversation. We may have different views, but you express your viewpoint rationally and comprehensively, and I appreciate exchanging views with people who have different perspectives than mine.

I have crap eyesight. I paid $500 for these dual 4K monitors. I can resize text within them. I don't see the value in paying 8 times this amount when I still can comprehend only one email at a time or one .py or .sql file at a time... Most people cannot read six emails at a time and retain even 50% of what they read. At most I might want two apps up so I can read an ask in an email while addressing the problem in the other screen.

At the same time, it's a lot more useful for me to scroll through code or data lineage than to graphically navigate it because I have to understand the sequence of things whether it's an email or 1000 lines of code.

This is what I'm getting at... it may seem more convenient to have infinitely resizable screens, but I always like the analogy of sitting in the front row of a movie theater, seeing Godzilla's foot. Let's state this problem another way.

A 27 inch screen a couple feet from my face occupies the same part of my field of vision as my 65 inch TV 12 feet from my face.

Does that help illustrate where I'm coming from?

 

[Night Spring]

"satisfying" still doesn't tell me what problem is being solved, in large part because you're not telling me what itch is being satisfied, or which problem solved.

I manage teams in US, UK, India, and Europe, and I am on calls from 4am until 2pm. So I am genuinely interested but I can also give you a list a mile long of why I like some distance during meetings (it rhymes with "dull key asking").

Does everything have to be a problem to be solved? What problem does a 70-inch TV monitor solve as opposed to a 20-inch monitor? It just gives people more satisfaction because the picture is bigger and it feels more vivid.

And yes, metaverse meetings may cut down on our abilities to surreptitiously do other things during dull patches, lol. Who said technological progress is always a good thing? ;p

I personally like to stick to iMessage and emails. But that's also because I'm hard of hearing and can't follow audio conversations over Zoom/FaceTime. Talking about that, I'm hoping Apple will implement live caption on VP -- I've always wished I could place speech bubbles on people so I can read what they are saying. That's a real, though niche, problem a device like VP could solve.

 

[Night Spring]

I have crap eyesight. I paid $500 for these dual 4K monitors. I can resize text within them. I don't see the value in paying 8 times this amount when I still can comprehend only one email at a time or one .py or .sql file at a time... Most people cannot read six emails at a time and retain even 50% of what they read. At most I might want two apps up so I can read an ask in an email while addressing the problem in the other screen.

At the same time, it's a lot more useful for me to scroll through code or data lineage than to graphically navigate it because I have to understand the sequence of things whether it's an email or 1000 lines of code.

This is what I'm getting at... it may seem more convenient to have infinitely resizable screens, but I always like the analogy of sitting in the front row of a movie theater, seeing Godzilla's foot. Let's state this problem another way.

A 27 inch screen a couple feet from my face occupies the same part of my field of vision as my 65 inch TV 12 feet from my face.

Does that help illustrate where I'm coming from?

I think we have very different needs when it comes to how we use documents. My field is translation and literary analysis. I want to have multiple documents open and legible in front of me at once so I can compare them. Ctrl-tabbing through them is less than ideal because I can't be sure I remember exactly what was in Doc A when looking at Doc B. You know those "find the difference" games where you get two nearly identical pictures with slight differences you try to find? That's what I do, only with texts rather than pictures.

 

[Avatar74]

Does everything have to be a problem to be solved? What problem does a 70-inch TV monitor solve as opposed to a 20-inch monitor? It just gives people more satisfaction because the picture is bigger and it feels more vivid.

Well, in the one example it was a business use case and there you do have to have a business justification because budgets go through approvals processes. I'm part of the management team that hears vendor pitches and decides what is and isn't going to move the needle for us. We killed over $2 million in spend on tools that weren't generating positive increases in our output.

When it comes to personal wants, the word "problem" takes on a more, not less, complex meaning. This is relevant because it's still a company that makes and markets that thing, so there's a business case as to why that thing should be built and it ties directly to how sticky people's preferences are.

Trying to navigate consumers' fickle behavior is a lot more complicated than the controllable variable when you are both the gatekeeper to the tools and the one directing your employees' work.

So you still have to solve the question of why a consumer would use this and not just tire of it... and the biggest driver of that behavior's stickiness is convenience relative to cost.

See, for me, the price of a 65 inch TV is trivial. But you aren't going to sell very many 65 inch TVs if your entire target market is just the 10% of the population that share my economic circumstances.

Even though the price of an AVP is still trivial to me, it's not more convenient than the things I already own... that's the problem of trying to disrupt a market. You're the new guy, you've got this cool new tool... I agree that it is cool but the only people who don't already have better suited tools and toys to do what they want or need are the ones who can't afford yours.

That's why convenience relative to cost is the problem to solve.

 

[Night Spring]

Even though the price of an AVP is still trivial to me, it's not more convenient than the things I already own... that's the problem of trying to disrupt a market. You're the new guy, you've got this cool new tool... I agree that it is cool but the only people who don't already have better suited tools and toys to do what they want or need are the ones who can't afford yours.

That's why convenience relative to cost is the problem to solve.

Oh, I totally agree. I'm not buying the VP this gen, because the cost is too much for any convenience/pleasure I get out of it. But I do see a lot of things that VP does that I like, and hoping someday the cost would come down enough to make it worth it.

 

[Avatar74]

You know those "find the difference" games where you get two nearly identical pictures with slight differences you try to find? That's what I do, only with texts rather than pictures.

There are many tools that do this already. If you go to your employer demanding that they put $4000 into a tool, you're not only arguing (potentially) that you haven't been doing your job efficiently all these years up til now, but you're also pricing yourself out of a market that is becoming more and more automated.

We hire translators in our European markets, and the spend is going down, not up, in huge part because AI can deliver a "good enough" solution... So it's a bit of a can of worms to actively prod them in the direction where they're going to have an a-ha moment that sadly would put you out of a job (and believe me I know the pitfalls of it, I wouldn't advocate for it, but it's happening).

But more than that, I am not speaking about what personally benefits me. I don't think that any company would make their investors happy if what they focused on was me. I work on their side of the fence, thinking about how to make our business partners and customers lives easier. That is what I do, and so I am thinking about what things MR needs to be able to do for it to be more than 1% of the size of the current PC market... none of which are even close to the kinds of problems you and I are discussing.

 

[Night Spring]

There are many tools that do this already. If you go to your employer demanding that they put $4000 into a tool, you're not only arguing (potentially) that you haven't been doing your job efficiently all these years up til now, but you're also pricing yourself out of a market that is becoming more and more automated.

We hire translators in our European markets, and the spend is going down, not up, in huge part because AI can deliver a "good enough" solution... So it's a bit of a can of worms to actively prod them in the direction where they're going to have an a-ha moment that sadly would put you out of a job (and believe me I know the pitfalls of it, I wouldn't advocate for it, but it's happening).

But more than that, I am not speaking about what personally benefits me. I don't think that any company would make their investors happy if what they focused on was me. I work on their side of the fence, thinking about how to make our business partners and customers lives easier. That is what I do, and so I am thinking about what things MR needs to be able to do for it to be more than 1% of the size of the current PC market... none of which are even close to the kinds of problems you and I are discussing.

Yeah, those AI translations are good enough until that one critical translation error slips by, lol. But I've known for a while that AI translation would replace most human translators sooner than later. Oh, well, the gig was good while it lasted. I still like to compare texts and analyze them, as a hobby. Which is how I'm evaluating the VP, strictly as something I'd get for my own personal pleasure, if the day comes when the price is low enough.

I kind of agree with you that it's hard to find a purpose for the VP in a general corporate environment. Most of the use cases suggested for it, including my own, are pretty niche. Or just purely for personal pleasure/entertainment, like watching 3D movies.

I think for the foreseeable future, people who love the VP are going to love it, and people who look for practical utility out of it are going to remain puzzled. Is it necessary for the VP to be practical useful in order for it to survive as a product, or is the entertainment value enough to sustain it? Or will practical uses develop for it that we are not seeing yet? Time will tell!

 

[Avatar74]

Oh, I totally agree. I'm not buying the VP this gen, because the cost is too much for any convenience/pleasure I get out of it. But I do see a lot of things that VP does that I like, and hoping someday the cost would come down enough to make it worth it.

I think I'm thinking much further down the road because that's my tendency... when I wrote my senior thesis on internet distribution, I didn't realize it at the time but I was basically proposing one-click purchasing. In hindsight, I now understand that, and not all the other technical stuff, was what succeeded.

The next leap to me is, as you've surely seen me say elsewhere, no-click purchasing. That's a convenience too large to ignore. That's a holy grail type technology... a virtual superpower that has real world potency.

The real power of MR combined with AI is the ability to do things we need without all the extra b.s. You know what's more useful than letting me see what's in a room? Telling me that there's a ground fault on the east wall outlet in that room and asking me if I'd like to order a replacement part or call an electrician.

That's what I mean by getting to the real root of a real problem. What you're really trying to solve for is analyzing multiple documents at once... resizable screens isn't the solution to that. A tool that can identify the differences in context and meaning as well as syntax and grammar, and have a conversation with you about whether or not that's what you really meant to convey or if you were meaning something else. THAT'S useful and it still needs your input because ultimately the computer can't know what your intent is. Human decisions should never be removed from the chain of events, but tools can help focus our attention on where these decisions need to be made.

I've already figured out that no-click purchasing is the next big thing, and we're maybe 5 years away from that... I'm focused now on how to make that even more useful. Right now we are seeing VR/MR stuck in infancy... Apple Vision Pro can't even tell what a room is, let alone figure out where there's a problem in it. It doesn't know one space from another, or what I do in these spaces, and those are the kinds of hurdles to solve if you want MR to be "the thing that gets you to the thing"... it has to know what the thing is and why it matters to me in more than just a mathematical sense.

So-called semantic/heuristic models are anything but, and Google's sudden AI backslide into utter uselessness is proof of that.

There's a seismic shift happening in AI where it's rendering the internet unusable at breakneck speed. If that continues, and we don't change the focus from "Hey let's get everyone to the metaverse" to, "How do we get AI to actually, tangibly improve real life" it's going to become a wasteland of bots talking to bots because everybody has gone back to doing stuff in the real world because my friends don't try to monetize every interaction with me... unless they work for an MLM company and I can think of few things people despise more than that one friend who won't %!^$ing shut up about Herbalife...

 

[heretiq]

Do I need to? Everyone points to VR Gaming as the biggest use case... If the biggest use case for VR represents less than 2% of the gaming market, then do I really need to add anything further?

I have no skin in the game either way, because VR won't have what I need until long after I am gone. I'm just trying to tell you, just as Steve would, how humans behave... it's entirely of no consequence to me if all you want is for VR to serve your personal desires. But that is a market of few.

If you want this to be a ubiquitous, indispensable tool, you've got to spend a lot more time understanding how people live and work.

Nice try, but no. First of all, Steve would remind us that Spatial Computing transcends VR Gaming and tell those who insist on reducing it to VR Gaming to respect Apple’s vision and not water it down to some uninformed and uninspired caricature of what they’ve spent untold life energies to create — just because version 1 is not perfect or aligned with their opinion of what it should be. And, second, I don’t know who “Everyone” is — I haven’t met them. However I have read/watched dozens of posts/articles (here on MR and elsewhere) and videos (on YT) of people who purchased and use AVP, and none of them have said that VR Gaming is the biggest AVP use case for them -- so the mythical “Everyone” who “points to VR Gaming as the biggest use case” appears to be an outlier and not a credible basis for sweeping pronouncements about what everyone thinks. Why is it so hard to admit that your opinion is just that, your opinion, and nothing more?

 

[Avatar74]

Why is it so hard to admit that your opinion is just that, your opinion, and nothing more?

Of course it's an opinion... you're free to ignore it.

 

[Night Spring]

That's what I mean by getting to the real root of a real problem. What you're really trying to solve for is analyzing multiple documents at once... resizable screens isn't the solution to that. A tool that can identify the differences in context and meaning as well as syntax and grammar, and have a conversation with you about whether or not that's what you really meant to convey or if you were meaning something else. THAT'S useful and it still needs your input because ultimately the computer can't know what your intent is. Human decisions should never be removed from the chain of events, but tools can help focus our attention on where these decisions need to be made.

An AI that does that would be useful, but I'd still need to see multiple documents at once to follow what the AI was doing.

I think the uses you are envisioning for MR is worthwhile, but there are multiple intermediary steps technology needs to develop to get there. Many of those intermediary stages are going to appear pointless/useless, until one day we look back and say, aha, that's why we needed to go through that stage! Many of these exploratory steps are going to lead nowhere, so they would seem like wasted effort. But progress isn't possible without trial and error.

But then, I've always liked Zhuangzi, and his "usefulness of uselessness."

 

[Avatar74]

I think the uses you are envisioning for MR is worthwhile, but there are multiple intermediary steps technology needs to develop to get there. Many of those intermediary stages are going to appear pointless/useless

Agreed... which is why I keep referencing two milestones. The first milestone is near term, and that's no-click purchasing. The second milestone is a true AI assistant that anticipates needs.

The trick is in how you structure the path from one to the other so you don't start losing money trying to develop those intermediary steps... It's like the problem of television shows: You have to build up to Season 2 but if you don't put out a great season 1, you won't get Season 2 green lit.

Therein lies the problem and the real dynamics of funding projects that don't pay off quickly: If all we get out of AI for the next 30 years is big clunky helmets that, at best, can buy me a pair of boots or scare the crap out of my brother in law with an uncanny valley avatar, it's probably not going to make enough money for investors to put up with continuing to flush money down the toilet.

So it ends up being less like iPhone and more like AppleTV, a product I've been a fan of since day one, but has grown barely a trickle in 20 years and still loses money for Apple. The dollars trickle in simply because it is a content portal that helps round out Apple's larger product ecosystem. That and the fact that Apple can make back their investment on individual movies in about five minutes is what sustains it.

But as saturated as the smartphone market is, the iPhone gravy train cannot keep funding all the other projects indefinitely. There's going to be a point in time when they need to have another pocket sized revolution a-la iPod and iPhone, and that's where no-click purchasing has to demo on the iPhone so Apple starts building an Amazon-killer.

That will fund AVP into the next century... assuming Apple isn't underwater, literally and figuratively, by then.

 

[HDFan]

"What problems can MR actually solve and how?"

It's not just about solving problems. It is about new experiences, educational opportunities and many other things we haven't thought about.

1. One of my doctors mentioned how difficult is to keep monitor all of the devices when doing a surgery. Maybe not a possibility now but certainly might be once the price gets down. There is one vendor that sells a product that does this but it is in the $100K range.

2. The educational uses are infinite. We already have cell and heart apps. Imagine how much money a company could save on expensive training if there are training apps. Jigspace shows what can be done.

3. Imagine being able to travel to museums all over the world without leaving your armchair. The first apps are staring to appear. Museums seem to be excited about the possibilities.

Face time: how the art world is preparing to work with the Apple Vision Pro

The mixed reality headset offers astonishing visual quality. But, as it goes on sale at $3,500 a go, how will it enhance curators' dreams of giving global access to high-fidelity experiences of gallery and museum shows?

www.theartnewspaper.com

4. I'm not going to climb Mt. Everest. But I could experience it, and other similar things, if someone made a VP app documenting the ascent.

This is just the beginning. There is no limit to developer imagination that can create VP apps that enrich our lives.

 

[MockT]

People say how the future has arrived for them and then go on to describe use cases where they made their virtual screen work.

Surely, the promise of this device is to run everything you need natively, the Mac connection is just a bandaid until we get there.

 

[Avatar74]

It's not just about solving problems. It is about new experiences, educational opportunities and many other things we haven't thought about.

That's what I mean by "problems"... or you can call them use cases or questions. Let's reframe it like the way Steve might, using one of his favorite catchphrases:

What is the highest order bit? -or- What is the biggest, most impactful use case we can solve for?

Now let's take a look at your examples:

1. One of my doctors mentioned how difficult is to keep monitor all of the devices when doing a surgery. Maybe not a possibility now but certainly might be once the price gets down. There is one vendor that sells a product that does this but it is in the $100K range.

So this is a great use case, at least one that merits further exploration, but not for Apple. I can think of two reasons in particular:

1. Regulatory requirements on diagnostic equipment. Apple watch can monitor your heart rate, do a rudimentary ECG and provide an alert if you have a wide QRS interval. But they stress that these are NOT medical devices. They do this because medical devices have much stricter requirements and Apple does not want to be in this diagnostic devices space that other companies are better suited for.

2. Size of market relative to the development, testing and regulatory certification costs for medical devices. This is a very small market dominated by a few players: Siemens, J&J, Abbott (whom I used to work for), Medtronic... Apple's not going to go after this market. Someone else might.

2. The educational uses are infinite. We already have cell and heart apps. Imagine how much money a company could save on expensive training if there are training apps. Jigspace shows what can be done.

This one goes back to budget... when I was in grade school, they started buying Apple ][e clones (Franklin Ace) because they did not have the budget for an entire lab of ][e's. Mac clone licensing is one of the very first things Steve killed when he came back to Apple.

Also, I notice that you keep talking about apps. I want to reiterate that Apple is a hardware company, not an app company. Apps are done by and large by third party developers. The base software and in house apps they develop are very limited in scope (almost entirely general productivity tools: Calendar, mail, voice recorder, camera, etc.). Specializing in specific industries is purposely not part of the system suite.

If third party developers want to develop apps for this space, they will, but that has nothing to do with Apple's focus. Third party development is a different discussion entirely.

3. Imagine being able to travel to museums all over the world without leaving your armchair. The first apps are staring to appear. Museums seem to be excited about the possibilities.

App, not Apple. See above.

Face time: how the art world is preparing to work with the Apple Vision Pro

The mixed reality headset offers astonishing visual quality. But, as it goes on sale at $3,500 a go, how will it enhance curators' dreams of giving global access to high-fidelity experiences of gallery and museum shows?

www.theartnewspaper.com

4. I'm not going to climb Mt. Everest. But I could experience it, and other similar things, if someone made a VP app documenting the ascent.

App, not Apple. See above.

 

[Night Spring]

App, not Apple.

You are moving goal posts. You asked what problems might be solved by a device like the VP, @HDFan gave you examples. Who specifically might develop the software to implement those use cases wasn't part of the discussion. Apple has always made hardware and left the majority of software development to 3rd party developers. Wasn't Visicalc, considered the "killer app" for the Apple II, 3rd party software?

 

[rhemy123]

You might say I'm trolling but hear me out: Unlike iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac, Vision Pro is NOT an essential device which is a huge problem.


Truth be told, AR/VR/MR markets are extremely far from consumer markets which has been proven for several decades. Based on the history, any kind of consumer AR/VR/MR devices literally failed or disappeared because consumers were not convinced to buy and use. Instead, a lot of companies switched to B2B markets. Yes, AR/VR/MR markets still failed to justify and convince consumers to buy it due to many issues. You might say Meta Quest series are successful but they never did. They sold more than 20 million devices before Quest 3 released in 3 years and yet, they still considered as failure or not successful as people did not use it regularly.


If you think the time will solve the problem, think again and it never did. Having a lot of apps didnt really solve the problem like Mac App Store. Currently, all AR/VR/MR devices still failed for consumer markets while they have more uses for B2B markets such as MS HoloLens 2. Why? Because they lack contents and purposes. Vision Pro is nice and high-end product but still, it has issues that AR/VR/MR devices already had. Literally, who really wanna use Vision Pro instead of iPhone, iPad, and Mac? Vision Pro does NOT provide unique usages over other devices as consumers failed to see it essential. At least AR/VR/MR consumer devices have gaming purposes but Vision Pro does NOT support both PCVR and hardware controller which literally makes it impossible to port VR games. Even then, most VR games suck and there aren't many great games like Half-life: Alyx. Clearly, Vision Pro is limited compared to other devices.


Yes, at least Vision Pro has its own ecosystem unlike others but most of us still not convinced to use AR/VR/MR devices. That's a hard truth. Without purposes, it has no uses. Some people may say it works fine but they dont represent all users. Even Meta failed even if they sold more than 20 million devices as people did not use it well but less than 200,000? That's a joke and developers and companies aren't really willing to develop apps just for Vision Pro. 1000 native apps? Well, no killer apps so far. I'm still not convinced to use Vision Pro after I tested it several times. You see, AR/VR/MR markets aren't easy at all and that's why all companies are struggling with AR/VR/MR.


Even if Vision Pro becomes smaller and lighter, the purpose has to be given or consumers will NOT gonna buy it. Like I said before, Vision Pro or any kind of AR/VR/MR devices were never be essential like other devices that Apple created or at least have some purposes. At this point, Vision Pro has too limited usages while not convinced to replace Apple devices. As I checked the history of AR/VR/MR, I am doubtful about Vision Pro's future. The usage is too limited and there is really nothing I can do other than watching movies. I am not convinced to use and so others.


I'm not saying that Vision Pro is a total failure. But Vision Pro itself isn't really different from AR/VR/MR devices and for consumer markets, there are NO successful devices as of today and Meta is not even successful as well. From my own perspective, Apple really need to bring a cheap version as soon as possible while adding more and unique software features which can distinguish from other AR/VR/MR devices since Apple has a large ecosystem. Dont forget that Apple already had many failures with new technology such as Touch Bar, butterfly keyboard, Mac Pro 2013, lighting port, XDR stand, and more. Literally, AR/VR/MR devices are still not great for consumers and lacks contents and usages. What makes Vision Pro so different from others? Huh?






AR/VR/MR is still a whole new frontier and no consumer AR/VR/MR devices has ever succeeded which is the truth. If Apple can not convince consumers to use Vision Pro due to limited usage and lack of contents, they are gonna end up being failure or a waste of money. At this point, Apple has to show something from WWDC 2024.

The vision OS is so great people are finding purposes for it. This makes it different than other AR/VR/MR headsets. If it was lighter with better pass through and I could connect it to my windows work laptop. I would use it over using a laptop. It’s a way better experience because you have full control over your environment. That is not something you can do in the real world. For this reason alone, it is a better workspace, and this is just the beginning. Not to mention, the movie viewer is great. Get rid of the glare, and I would be hard pressed to see movies any other way. Micro oled screens are fantastic. Every movie I watch looks better than on my TV or even at the movies.

 

[Avatar74]

by a device

If software can solve it, then that software doesn't especially need to be on AVP.

What I'm interested in solving, and I put it this way because I am genuinely interested in actually solving it rather than winning internet points, is:

How do you make the most compelling case possible for global MR adoption?

I'm not trying to be difficult. I genuinely see greater potential in this than most can possibly imagine, but I also know better than most just how fickle consumers can be.

Think about the highest order bit where AVP becomes indispensable rather than nice to have.

That's what you need to solve for if you want this thing to be THE thing that gets you to the things.

You don't need to want that. If you want it to be AppleTV 5.0, that's a different argument which I'm not really contesting.

But if you do want it to be as big as iPhone, what you must think about is this:

What use case can you think of that, a) can only work on an MR headset, and b) is indispensable to c) the largest audience possible?

Find the answer to that, and you have the requirements for your "killer app". I'm not asking you to tell me as if I'm going to give you a prize... I want you to think about it, assuming that you also want MR to be something more than AppleTV 5.0.

I've no dog in this hunt. I will never buy a VR headset in my lifetime. I am not the target market.

I just see MR as having the potential to be simpler, more elegant, more powerful and intuitive, and even if I think I have the killer use case for it, I'll move my own goal posts further out because I am not satisfied with my own ideas either.

 

[surferfb]

The vision OS is so great people are finding purposes for it. This makes it different than other AR/VR/MR headsets. If it was lighter with better pass through and I could connect it to my windows work laptop. I would use it over using a laptop. It’s a way better experience because you have full control over your environment. That is not something you can do in the real world. For this reason alone, it is a better workspace, and this is just the beginning. Not to mention, the movie viewer is great. Get rid of the glare, and I would be hard pressed to see movies any other way. Micro oled screens are fantastic. Every movie I watch looks better than on my TV or even at the movies.

This is a kinda janky workaround, but I need to keep a windows laptop from my client open alongside corporate stuff from my company. I have been doing Windows PC->HDMI Cable->USB-C Capture Card->Mac and then using OBS on my Mac to get the client windows machine into AVP. You do need a separate mouse and keyboard (or in my case, to remember to switch which machine it is paired with) but it works.

 

[Night Spring]

If software can solve it, then that software doesn't especially need to be on AVP.

Software needs hardware to run on! @HDFan 's examples were all software that can only run on AVP or similar VR/AR/MR headsets.

The thrust of my points has always been:

How do you make the most compelling case for MR adoption?

What use case can you think of that, a) can only work on an MR headset, and b) is indispensable to c) the largest audience possible?

I disagree with your view that a device needs to be indispensable to be widely adopted. Is vacuum cleaners the only way we can clean our house? Isn't bloom and pan enough? Most people nowadays use vacuum cleaners because it's massively more convenient, but are they indispensable? I'd argue no.

By the same logic, something doesn't need to be possible only on an MR headset to drive mass adoption. If the MR experience is way more convenient or pleasurable than the alternatives, that could motivate people to switch to MR. Let's take gaming -- are there any games currently out there that's only possible on a MR headset? There may be a few, but the massively popular games all have versions that can be played on PCs and traditional gaming machines, don't they? Yet there are gamers who prefer to play them with a VR headset, because the experience is better.

So I don't think we should be looking for things that can only be done in MR to drive MR adoption. If and when I get an AVP, I'd be using it to do the same things I do on my iPad and Mac. But hopefully in a more convenient and pleasant way.

 

[Avatar74]

So I don't think we should be looking for things that can only be done in MR to drive MR adoption.

I am looking for these things. You don't need to.

Now, let's not re-litigate this the next time someone else replies to me, and I am replying to their reply.

 

[Night Spring]

That's what you need to solve for if you want this thing to be THE thing that gets you to the things.

You don't need to want that. If you want it to be AppleTV 5.0, that's a different argument which I'm not really contesting.

But if you do want it to be as big as iPhone, what you must think about is this:

I don't think Apple is aiming for VP to be as big as the iPhone, not at the current price. I think for now, it'll be AppleTV 5.0, as you say. But I also think this is a necessary step to get to the kind of indispensable device you are envisioning. You need the device in the hands of users, with 3rd party developers creating software for it, in order to fully explore the potentials and problems of a device like this. Apple isn't going to be able to produce that indispensable MR device in a lab.

The first Macintosh with its GUI didn't feel like an indispensable thing to me. But now the whole world runs on GUI, whether it's Windows, MacOS, iOS or Android. MR is going to need a similar timeframe to develop.

 

[Avatar74]

I don't think Apple is aiming for

I get up at 4am, have meetings from 5am to 2pm, work til 8, sometimes 11pm. I'm definitely the wrong person to have this conversation with.

The first Macintosh with its GUI didn't feel like an indispensable thing to me. But now the whole world runs on GUI, whether it's Windows, MacOS, iOS or Android. MR is going to need a similar timeframe to develop.

Apple is not the company it was in 1977 or 1985, and the marketplace isn't what it was then either. Apple is now a $2.8 trillion company. Both in terms of continuing to generate a positive return for investors and to continue changing the world in ways that people expect of them, what they choose to do with it has implications for the entire product ecosystem around MR.

I face the same problem year over year trying to continue to grow my retirement... At the scale my portfolio is now, continuing to generate the same CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) year in and year out gets harder and harder to do. I can't invest in the things I used to invest in and maintain that growth.

It's true that AVP is a stepping stone, but iPhone sales have been flat for about 7 years. When you're growing your R&D spend 15% year over year the products you have an expectation that revenue from these products will grow similarly.

Apple R&D grew over the past three years at a third the rate it grew during the iPhone launch, so unit sales need to grow 22% year over year for the next eight years... or either the R&D gets cut or the project gets killed.

If the AVP project gets killed, it'll be a bellwether by which portfolio managers direct their institutional clients not to invest in VR in general, and investors at all levels, including VC, hedge funds, private equity clients, etc., follow suit.