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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Technology
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Apple vision will be a very good product ...in a few years, after it's much cheaper and more capable. But as of today, you can get an oculus quest which does a large percent of the same stuff for literally 10% of the price
And support Facebook while you're at it! 😣
I know Apple isn't much better, but Oculus selling out to Zuck instantly guaranteed I would never buy their products.
It's a double-edged sword.
Oculus' vision was to bring VR to the mainstream. They really didn't have the cash to make that happen on their own. They were using leftover parts from the mobile and tablet industry to hack together some headsets. It was a good proof of concept, but that was it.
With Meta's backing they put VR on the map. Others jumped in on it. Without them the Vive probably wouldn't have happened, nor would WMR. Then the transition to self-contained VR, the Quest but also others like the Pico, the Pimax Crystal and now the Vision pro. I know PCVR is pretty dead now but to me it was more of a transitory phase (and I still use it a lot but wirelessly now). VR was never going to be mainstream if you needed a powerful PC to do it and with all the cable mess.
I don't think these would have happened without the meta investment. I think it was good for the industry as a whole. However yeah, for consumer privacy it's not great that it was Meta that did the investment and not someone else (except Google or Amazon which would have been just as bad)
I don't really view it as a sellout and I was one of the earliest kickstarter backers. Serious money was needed to make it fly.
I think that's a fair take. This product category needs people willing to throw boatloads of cash at it for an extended period of time and there's only so many companies capable and willing to do that. I think if another company had bought them, there's a very good chance they would have quit by now. I'm not sure Google would have stuck it out this long, they love acquiring and then murdering products.
Very good take, thank you for the insight! You're more than likely right; they need the money, and it was the best offer (if ill advised ...). Industry got kick-started (pun intended), and there was much rejoicing.
I get the sarcasm ;) Well, rejoicing, no, of course. It's not the best thing that could have happened.
But, I'm pretty sure if meta hadn't invested, we would have heard nothing more of VR after the DK1 had come out.
I'm not supporting meta or saying they're a great company. But they are sinking a lot of money into a phenomenon they care about, which is good for the industry one way or another. It gets the opportunity to prove its merits.
I haven't had a FB account since Cambridge Analytica, though I temporarily had one to use the Quest 2, while it was necessary (rigged so nobody could discover me so it was literally no more than a placeholder). But yeah I do use the Quest because as a technologist I do want to be on the front line. And Apple is just really absolutely not an option for me because of its price (and for being in Europe for that matter).
I wasn't being sarcastic, I was just trying to be funny with the Month Python reference at the end 😅
I think you're completely right, and your take on it is a lot more nuanced than my low-effort 'fuck Facebook' comment 👌
Ah thanks, I didn't get the reference 😅
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.
I feel like they could have cut down on the weight and price a considerable amount by not having that goofy screen on the front. Probably a bump to battery life too.
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.
My personal theory on it is that what they really want is a device with an actually clear screen kinda like a Hololens, but not shitty and huge. Unfortunately technological hurdles prevented them from doing that, so this was their solve.
I suspect this eyes-through-the-device form factor is philosophically a branding element to them so they're faking it until it can be real to maintain some consistency.
I could be totally wrong though and it's more simply trying to "humanize" the things or some such. They're an idiosyncratic company sometimes. I would also not be surprised if they release a cheaper model in the future without it.
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.
I’m pretty sure they priced it that high on purpose. They only want devs and enthusiastic
early adopters to buy this thing. Since currently it has no use case for the average user. Apple is probably afraid that if people buy it now and then realize that they don’t see any use for VR in their life they will never buy a VR product again and Apple will have lost that customer forever. Apple hasn’t found the killer app for the mainstream use case for this product yet and thus they are putting it in the hands of the third party developers.
We also seen it happening with other headsets. Lots of people bought a Quest 2 during the corona pandemic, which triggered the Zuck to invest heavily in the meta verse, and now they are collecting dust and nobody visits facebook’s meta verse . The average consumer doesn’t want to strap on a clunky headset just for games or porn.
This is AR, not VR.
What they're probably trying to avoid is another Google Glass situation, and are in line with HoloLens 2 pricing.
Yeah that's my thought as well