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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • 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






  • Yes, actually at my job a co-worker just found exactly such a bug yesterday: Debug build zeroed out the variable and the release build didn’t. So the bug only occurred in the release build, but could not be reproduced on the debug build where the developers work on. So in the end he found it because of the different compiler flags used for debug vs release builds at our work place.









  • 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.




  • 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.