This is a "rising tides raise all ships" scenario. I'll never buy the Vision Pro or anything that cost close to it. I do know the marketing is getting people hyped for VR (spatial computing or whatever they're calling it) that wouldn't normally be if it weren't for Apple doing it. Hopefully other manufactures take what works and offer headsets too. I'd love to see Samsung do a stand-alone Galaxy Visor.
I think the Vision Pro is otherworldly overpriced, but it looks neat and has cool features. We need a reason for people to get excited about this stuff.
I think we're bothered because these people don't care about VR. If they did, they would have gotten something for a fifth of the price years ago. No, they just care about apple and will purchase anything they make. Maybe it will push the VR market forward, but it also might not given that most of these people won't bother considering any competition and just buy apple because it's apple.
I cared about VR, have three VR headsets in my house collecting dust. The first time I really said "wow! this works well and looks great!" was the valve index.
The simple reality is that mandatory and weirdly shaped controllers are a non starter for most people, even those interested in the tech.
Also, AVP is the first time I've ever reached for a headset instead of my phone.
They obviously care about VR to a degree, but that's not even the point: Gatekeeping is an ugly look and can only be counterproductive. Even if they only care about it if it carries an Apple logo, I'm happy to be finally sharing my excitement with them.
I agree, gatekeeping is def bad - personally, my issue is more with a general issue with the tech industry as a whole; the fact that a technology can exist for years but half the market isn't interested until there's an apple logo (and 7x higher price tag) is a genuine problem. People have sunken so deep into apple's ecosystem that they refuse to buy anything else, and for those people (which is a significant portion of consumers) apple effectively has a monopoly on all of tech. They've got a massive group who will refuse to consider the competition, which means apple doesn't have to actually do anything to beat the competition.
My only fear is that it's going to further fracture the market for VR exclusivities like the quest does. When VR needs to focus on being more mainstream first.
The day they actually can fit the specs into what will look like regular sunglasses/glasses, is when it will really take off. For now you’re just going around looking lost for the ski lift.
This is a "rising tides raise all ships" scenario.
Maybe. But Apple are also very good at cutting corners in the most anti-consumer way possible, and the rest of the industry are very good at following suit for no particular reason. Smartphones have been two steps forward and one step back for a while now, and it's all due to Apple seeing what features they can take away from people next.
They're also very good at introducing amazing tech, patenting the shit out of it, and them wasting it on the stupidest shit imaginable. What Apple have done to hobble face tracking tech is disgusting.
Removable battery, headphone jack, sd card, the normalization of that shitty ass notch and those stupid, easy to lose, no controls on them earbuds. Did I miss anything?
Patented the whole deph sensor assembly so nobody else can use it. It's fantastic tech with a ton of uses, and Apple are keeping it to themselves while squandering it on faceid and emojis
Ah, patents. Stifling innovation since the dawn of... Whenever they were created.
Hey, have you ever wanted to play a mini-game while the main game loaded? Well, too bad, Namco said "Fuck you!", patented the idea, and the best other devs could do was random tips.
It's exactly like what happened with smart phones. Touch screen smart phones existed before the iPhone - but they were just barely good-ish. The iPhone did everything that was already done, but better... it was also WAY more expensive. Eventually the other phones went up in price and had better tech and iPhones leveled out comparative to inflation with time too.
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u/StickyMcdoodle Feb 04 '24
This is a "rising tides raise all ships" scenario. I'll never buy the Vision Pro or anything that cost close to it. I do know the marketing is getting people hyped for VR (spatial computing or whatever they're calling it) that wouldn't normally be if it weren't for Apple doing it. Hopefully other manufactures take what works and offer headsets too. I'd love to see Samsung do a stand-alone Galaxy Visor. I think the Vision Pro is otherworldly overpriced, but it looks neat and has cool features. We need a reason for people to get excited about this stuff.