Yeah, it’s the use case. Qualcomm had smartphones in the 80s, General Magic had the smartphone in the 90s, but it took more than another decade to actually combine phone and browser into the right form factor and fast enough mobile connection and a world wide web to make it work.

For AR there were moments too. Niantic with global positioning, 5G with fast mobile internet, but that was not enough.

Input method isn’t clear yet (Apple may have solved it with gaze-pinch), form factor not consumer market ready. Actual use case that is worth the price point? Nah

Even the biolab one could be both natural and man made: the virus was found and isolated by biologists studying local bat populations. They then failed to contain it properly (remember how surprised everyone was when they realized how contagious it was over the air?) and it started spreading.

Exactly. You can’t lose if you don’t fight. Khan fights… and sometimes loses

Yeah, on that front he is surprisingly good and it shouldn’t be minimized. But even on workers rights he’s not perfect. Who is though?

He appointed Lina Kahn as probably the strongest antitrust chair of the FTC in a long time.

Sure, he could do more than just wag the finger at shrinkflation, but Khan stopped a lot of mergers already.

All true, but there’s a reason for lamp shades as well, as they diffuse direct light and make the illumination of a room friendlier. Glare is a real issue and so while placing a mirror next to lamp increases the light in a certain direction it could be uncomfortable looking into the direction of the lamp. A white wall would reflect the light in a more diffuse and thus agreeable fashion, but the overall output measured in the room is gonna be smaller. Illumination depends on your needs in the end.

All the new Quests have a see-through function. That’s nothing new for VR devices. AVP got only 12ms delay and sacrificed FOV for image clarity, but that’s the only innovation.

My Android phone is so customizable it doesn’t run any Google services on it. That’s the difference: open source. But like I said, it’ll be quite a challenge providing an open source localization infrastructure. But there are already papers doing it with open street maps.

Indeed. Has all the VR features, but tries to sell as AR device with little to no AR use cases with the exception of a text field opening up over a real bluetooth keyboard. Having dozens of screens and apps floating around you isn’t “AR”, it’s VR. And that you can see the real world has already been done by Occulus years ago. Sure this is a better quality and leverages the Apple ecosystem, but you can’t sell it believably as an AR device yet. That said, the apps of the first iPhone weren’t great either, so let’s see how they iterate over this 600g ski goggles.

The first iPad also had shitty reviews and then it still established itself. I wouldn’t judge too early just based on these initial reviews.

Went to one of these with my co-workers. We were the only ones and nobody was there before we arrived and when we left there wasn’t anybody else coming in either.

They probably have to constantly update the HW to actually get customers and then it has to be expensive enough that the few that come, make them a profit.

If you look at it as an extension of Android, we’re at 15 years and counting. That assumes this is not just a fad however. Apple jumping into the market, may be an indicator that it will indeed not be a fad. That said, Google has made bad experiences with Google Glass in the past, but the acceptance of cameras in public has grown in the last decade and if enough people walk around with an AVP, head-mounted always on cameras will gain acceptance too.

It’s true that devices like these can gather a lot more data about you than a phone can. The amount of sensors that are always on and look at you and your environment should be a concern.

Luckily Apple isn’t directly interested in ad revenue, but more into what apps you use and their biggest interest was always to provide a friction free user experience so you actually want to use their products and are happy to spend so much money on them.

I personally am not a fan of Apple, because I’m not a friend of golden cages. So I’m just waiting for the Android version of the experience. Since this first iteration will be from Google as they would need to update their OS to really accomodate AR applications, that’s where my concern lies: How do we know that they are going to handle our data responsibly? Also AR does require quite some infrastructure to provide an interesting experience. Something Apple cannot do, is provide you with a shared experience with other users and to provide location specific, persistent content. There are many examples for such content, but for this discussion, let’s say a location specific ad in a fixed location somewhere in the city adjusted to your preferences.

Of course the virtual ad sucks, but such content could also be amazingly awesome and very useful. You no longer need to set up real-life signs, you just update what the virtual sign says in AR. Doesn’t need to be an ad, could be something interesting and useful.

But to provide location-specific, persistent content you need infrastructure. Infrastructure only Google and other tech giants have (see for instance the AR mode in Google maps that gives you directions). This is where I’m worried. It’s no longer enough to just get internet via a SIM card, maybe add your personal VPN on top to be safer. You now need direct connection to Google’s localization API and they’ll always know where all their AR devices are and because you wear it, they always know where you are, how you are, where you look etc… This should leave us worried.

Apple products were never really ergonomic, so having over half a kilo dragging down your face seems to be a normal continuation of their design language. The battery on a cable however and the outside-facing screen seem like obvious bad design decisions that just contribute to the unpleasant weight distribution.

And it tries to sell a VR device as an AR device without any real killer use case other than integrating it nicely into their other products. Alone from the tech it’s impressive. Their new R1 and M2 chips do great work and the price reflects how much effort was put into it. But that alone doesn’t sell the device.

Even the positive reviews were mixed and pointed out grave flaws.

In my opinion, for this to take off it actually needs to provide significant advantages for people to accept wearing a comfortable sensor suite plus computer on their head in front of their eyes. We haven’t seen any of this yet… from any product in the space.

I shared Naomi Klein’s support for the “No Label” party on Facebook many years ago. It was of course satire.

Since then I really look into the things people share before I share them myself. Even though I generally trust these people.

The largest differentiator to other devices by Apple really is the always-on cameras and the idea that you can/should use the device with always-on cameras in public. Otherwise Meta/Oculus have already done just as much as Apple has done here. Apple’s entry into the market just heats up the discussion around the “Metaverse” again.

I work in the space myself and wearing a VIO system on your head can really give you a lot of health and personality information. The device sees your iris and can identify you. It can analyze your gait and with some “AI magic” even notice and detect movements of your extremities outside the visual field of its cameras.

Devices like these can also be helpful in the medical space though: Not just for diagnosing diseases in the brain or of the eyes, but also help with therapy of patients by augmenting reality with virtual content that can help. One classic one is Parkinson’s patients who can walk again normally with some virtual visual guides on the floor.

Clearly that’s not the main goal of Apple, and obviously not of Meta, but it’s not all bad if used correctly. A privacy first approach is definitely necessary. And it’s not completely true that M$ doesn’t give a damn. With their Hololens they did for instance introduce a privacy preserving mapping and localization system. Nevertheless Apple has a good privacy track record compared to other tech companies.

The only clothes I wear multiple days are pants and sweaters. Only on days when I barely used socks I may wear them two days in a row.

With the amount of verbiage and ex-employees they’ve taken over from Magic Leap it’s not far fetched they were looking into a see-through device as you describe.

For sure. I wonder if it’s even worth it or just look creepy to look at a pair of two eyes deep in the uncanny valley.

It’s half a kilo strapped to the front of your head. There’s lighter products out there right now that can do similar things. I don’t see this first iteration as anything revolutionary.