Recent comments in /f/gadgets

DarthBuzzard OP t1_jbz3e6v wrote

> What is it with super rich corporate types trying to shove this down my throat.

Well they also shoved PCs and cellphones down our throat. People don't ask for entirely new technologies - people are only capable of thinking of iterations on existing technology. You know, faster horses and all that.

> It gives me headaches and motion sickness, just like 3D TVs did. And I'm not alone. So it's not going to take off.

They're not twiddling their thumb and whistling in the other direction while people come to them with this feedback. They are actively fixing these issues so that eventually a product will release where you can use it without a problem.

If they reach that goal, then your presumption of it not taking off doesn't work anymore.

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Eswyft t1_jbz1qao wrote

Whats clunky about them? I've used and owned a few.

They're fine. The interface is largely good now.

The reality it's a very different gaming experience and many people don't like it

The barrier for entry on any apple product is going to be high.

There is no UI problem. There is no hardware problem. There s a game problem. Beyond golf, beat saber, and flight sims, the games are not good on it

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HKei t1_jbyux73 wrote

> Apple is only expecting to sell around a million units [..] > > The complex device [..] is expected to cost around $3,000

Who tf are they expecting to sell this to? I know apple is big and all, but who's going to buy 1M units of a product that so far shows no indication of bringing anything new to the table in the space for somewhere between 3-5 times the cost of competitor devices, depending on the exact specs on the final product?

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Rudecles t1_jby8lvl wrote

I got it from remembering when Apple produced products that revolutionized industries because they were focused on solving problems with technology instead of marketing technology that no one asked for. Maybe I’m wrong, but the Apple Watch, Apple TV, and home pod haven’t really been the mind blowing advances that the iPod, iPhone and iPad were.

But hey, as long as you’re willing to let Apple sell you on decades old technology as if it was new, I guess it’s nonsense.

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DarthBuzzard OP t1_jbxxoep wrote

> Whether that was Atari Pong, a ZX Spectrum or a NES, it wasn't ever a market that people "didn't care about".

I'm talking about PCs, so the ZX Spectrum as mentioned above, and others like the C64 and IBM clones in general - these had the additional barrier of seeming to have no real use in the home beyond just a narrow selection of usecases. This was the general consumer consensus - either that or indifference.

You can see that here:

Being seen as in search of a use: https://www.academia.edu/320362/1980s_Home_Coding_the_art_of_amateur_programming

Many PCs collected dust: https://wayback.archive-it.org/5902/20150629134551/http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf01313/patterns.htm

They were seen as having no compelling use in the home: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yS4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

It was often considered longer to do tasks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVyGb5ID90&t=228s

Another report in the low usage rates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07xxyfLySA&t=761s

Another report on the apparent lack of usecases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8REddtaRG3E&t=1101s

> Same with TVs, to be honest. I don't know what makes you think the "limited programming" had anything to do with it, it's actually almost impossible to find someone of that generation who DIDN'T have a TV.

What generation? I didn't specify a timeframe, but I meant from the mid to late 1920s and 1930s - there just wasn't much enthusiasm for TVs in the home.

> People know exactly what they want and what they'll use them fo

As evidenced above by how people had no idea what they wanted with PCs, this isn't how things usually are. VR is the same, in that people see it only as a gaming device, but the most actively used apps are social apps, which most people without a headset think have no use in VR or don't even know such things exist.

> MR is a bollocks term attributed as some kind of new extension to VR and AR as if it's something different to AR. It's not. In fact it's so woolly that there's no real definition of how it differs to those two, or what it adds to either.

MR has been defined since the 1990s as the spectrum from which VR/AR exists within. It constitutes a device that does both and is indeed different than AR as it is a superset and includes a third term - AV (augmented virtually, augmenting virtual worlds with real objects) which will likely be an important feature for a lot of future VR users in the future. Why? Safety, allowing people to still feel highly immersed while keeping an eye on their sibling, partner, dog, food/drinks, keyboard for typing.

As for pure AR, no one wants/uses AR (as a wearable) because there isn't a single worldwide consumer AR device out there. The market is at best, in the Apple I stages and is awaiting an Apple II consumer launch.

MR hasn't failed and AR hasn't failed. They are both very early on - optical AR especially.

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ledow t1_jbxvxrf wrote

>Yet most people didn't want a cellphone until the late 1990s

When they became affordable rather than stupendously expensive status symbols.

Humans rarely reject technology so long as it's affordable. Smartphones are the perfect demonstration of this where the DRIVER for them was the ordinary person, not the corporate executive who's had them since the 70's/80's.

Also you mention the PC market and televisions - as far as I'm concerned the same happened there. The home computing market of the 80's was about AFFORDABLE computers in the home, and homes scrambled to have them once they were affordable. Whether that was Atari Pong, a ZX Spectrum or a NES, it wasn't ever a market that people "didn't care about".

Same with TVs, to be honest. I don't know what makes you think the "limited programming" had anything to do with it, it's actually almost impossible to find someone of that generation who DIDN'T have a TV.

And the same will happen with VR... now that there are £300 VR headsets, people are buying them in the millions.

It's about affordability and practicality. VR headsets never went away, they've always been around, but they've always been too expensive or clumsy (I speak as an owner of multiple Vive Pro's). People know exactly what they want and what they'll use them for, it's the "fitting on the head of a pin for the price of a Christmas present" factor that actually brings them to the point people will use them.

And with VR, we were discussing VR back in the 80's, VRML was invented before HTML 2, it was shown on TV programmes, used by architects, incorporated into military headsets, and featured in mainstream movies (e.g. Tron, Lawnmower Man).

MR is a bollocks term attributed as some kind of new extension to VR and AR as if it's something different to AR. It's not. In fact it's so woolly that there's no real definition of how it differs to those two, or what it adds to either.

People are using VR now. Nobody really wants / uses AR and the biggest use of it is in chaperone systems in VR. If you're going to enter another world, why would you want it on top of this one? And MR - as Meta are finding out - is the thing that nobody actually knows what it means, because there is no real fixed definition, it's whatever these companies try to sell it and universally looks like bad AR slapped over bad VR but then mixed with some primitive VRChat bollocks that was literally available in the 90's.

To say that this is going to "be" something is a nonsense. And it can't "be" anything without cheap, commodity VR and AR hardware first. Something which we're only JUST making the first happen. Fact is, people still don't want to dress up like a prat just to "feel" something that's in front of them anyway.

A VR-first console with cheap headsets would have created a new generation of games and games consoles, for instance. But Nintendo missed the boat and went for the Switch, and everyone else is just making PCs and now realising that they should really just sell those games on PC because they are *just* PC games.

MR isn't a thing anyone wants, or can even define, demonstrate or sell. That's why Meta keep failing on it, and nobody else wants to enter that space. VR is not only well-defined, it's available, it's commodity, and people know precisely what it is - from sci-fi. Hell, we're still making TV programmes about the concept - The Peripheral - for instance.

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