Report: Apple CEO “cares about nothing else” Than Building Breakout AR Glasses Before Meta
Report: Apple CEO “cares about nothing else” Than Building Breakout AR Glasses Before Meta
Apple is rumored to be working on two versions of Vision Pro, however a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman alleges the Cupertino tech giant is aiming to beat Meta to the punch with a pair of AR glasses. Citing someone with knowledge of the matter, the report maintains Apple CEO Tim Cook has put...
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This AR obsession is utterly baffling to me. There are so few real applications and the hardware requirements are insane so it's not something that will get widely adapted anyway. Sure in a decade or so it might have matured enough to have shed all these issues, but AR/VR feels like a really out of touch thing to prusue, especially if you look at the garbage ideas they have on how to use it - virtual meetings??
I get movies and games on these, possibly even some recording and porn, but these are not their B2B wet dreams anyway.
A Quest 3 isn't "insane." It does AR just fine for a few hundred bucks. There ARE real world applications and more coming all the time. The education and medical fields in particular can benefit greatly from such tech.
What should they be pursuing now? They have state of the art chips, tablets, phones, laptops and even all in one desktops, the only thing they don't have are TV's, at this point why not try to conquer the next frontier. even if it takes a decade?
It's been over a decade since the oculus rift came out and there hasn't been much improvement.
Agree on all that. In addition, headsets would become so very unhealthy if they took off. Just imagine the addictiveness of phones combined with the sedentary qualities of TV, with both dialed up to 11. People's vision would get all fucked up, and they would start dying on their couches plugged in. It’s simply not a vision for the future that has any legs.
More often than not, I'm burning calories in VR.
Oh do you mean you’re using it for exercise somehow? Or are you making a masturbation joke?
many of the games have you moving quite a lot, you can do 10 rounds of boxing for example and I guarantee you most people are not going to be able to get through 10 rounds of boxing
I’d really just like some glasses that simulate multiple monitors without needing special software. That’s all I want
It depends on what you mean by special software, but current VR headsets already do that out of the box, it's just that their built-in multi monitor stuff is not amazing. Without any special software, you could have multiple apps open, and those apps could be any android app(including browsers or relatively bad desktop experiences like dex). The third party stuff you can download or buy is just way better. And it's also way better when the multiple monitors are your computer's monitors. Cuz then they have 50x the horsepower behind them. For current headsets, generally the best option is Virtual Desktop, if you don't need more screens than can be handled by high quality timewarp layers. You can get clear 4k or 5740x1080, or anything smaller. With other multi desktop options, you can get more total screens, but there is no point to picking anything above 1080p since even that is already not rendered clearly.
Solutions for current VR/MR/XR headsets will follow to VR/MR/XR glasses, since headsets and glasses are slowly meeting in the middle. Headsets will continue to shrink while packing in the same or more tech, and the glasses will slowly be able to handle more and more tech in their tiny frames.
There will always be full size headsets, but they will essentially be the PC equivalent to the glasses being the smart phone equivalent. We will also likely still have PCs, but it's concievable that a smartphone won't be necessary for most people anymore. And even for the people that would still want a smartphone, a "processing puck" for the glasses would be the more likely solution. Give them pocket computer level power instead of smart watch level. So you can play good games on them, like 10-15 years ago-then pc game graphics.
Yep, and that seems to be the route Apple was going. Screens you can place anywhere in your visual field.
Gotta need some insane resolution for that right? And 1000hz refresh to make things good I guess.
I mean for text editing, coding etc.
Yep I've played with virtual monitors in VR space and I don't even like watching movies on them, the loss in resolution and the way the dynamic aspect of it (using a moving screen to simulate a static screen) makes it a shitty solution. Eventually it'll be good enough to watch TV in but I can't imagine doing serious work in it.
Quest 3 lens and displays actually are nice to look at, I coded for 5 hours in it the other day, and the only glaring flaw was the weight. My forehead hurt afterwards from the pressure, and I wasn't even using stock strap. The stock strap on quest headsets is known to be terrible. Tbf I only have a 1080p monitor for comparison bur its nice.
If you tried on anything lower than a Quest 3 with Virtual Desktop, you were right.
Quest 3 was the first VR headset to make virtual screens worth it. The clarity of pancake lenses cannot be overstated. The Quest pro technically had them too, but it wasn't quite good enough in some of the other aspects.
A Quest 3 with Virtual Desktop has replaced my TV and monitor because it was an upgrade to both. Even if all I did was placed those screens statically exactly where they used to be in real life. But of course, they can be anywhere, any size. The screens are 4k 120hz, good enough for pretty much anything. Once you get to about 80 degrees field of view, every pixel of a 4k 60hz signal can be temporally represented. Your head micromoves enough that you aren't missing any detail between each frame of the reference taking up two of the headsets frames. And when playing a game in actual 120 fps, you won't notice that you aren't seeing every single pixel directly physically represented every single frame, it looks good. Worth doing. 4k still looks much nicer than 1440p, which can be fully properly represented at that size and framerate.
Using anything other than Virtual Desktop, there is no need to set a monitor any higher than 1080p since they can't even draw that well enough to be properly represented. Virtual desktop is the only one that uses timewarp layers. If you were around for Carmack, you'll know that was always his first advice to every piece of VR software he reviewed, "please use timewarp layers for anything you want to look clear face-on" it's a huge difference.
Interesting. Ok, I will give it another go at some point. I had an Oculus Rift and there was a ton of promise but the tech was just not ready.
Oh yeah, for sure. The rift was great for it's time, but it is straight up comparitively garbage compared to what is out now. Wireless is now even more stable than the rift was at tracking, and the screens are so high res and they can decode at such speed that a wireless feed is almost as low latency and is much higher fidelity than what the Rift could do. There are still wired headsets that would be more clear nowadays, but with Virtual Desktop, the downsides to streaming wirelessly are pretty minimal.
Definitely get a demo of a Quest 3 if you can, or better. Though keep in mind the 3s isn't better, despite being newer, it is "s" in the same sense that smart phones tend to use it, it's a newer generation, but a cheaper lower end headset. A really good value. But it doesn't have pancake lenses, the most important part of the Quest 3, and clearly most expensive part, lol.
Wireless headsets can just be used anywhere, especially when you are in AR mode or playing something mixed reality. But they are still at their best when using your computer through them. Although, you don't have to. Their standalone games are basically xbox 360/PS3 level graphics, not amazing, but not really a problem. Most of what graphics have advanced by since then is just less "faking" stuff to look almost exactly right anyway and more rendering it in insanely computationally demanding ways to make it look 10% more right.
With Virtual Desktop, my computer is now in every room of my house, including the ones where I get to lay back in a recliner. And my computer is also at all my friends and family's houses. And with cell-phone tethering, it can be on a bus, or a hotel room where I don't want to use their wi-fi. Sometimes the cell connection is bad enough that I have to lower the resolution or framerate, but often times 4k 120hz is still viable on cell. Just has a bit more latency, so some game types are contraindicated. A 4k 120hz stream only needs about 25mbit to be clear enough to be worth using over a lower resolution or framerate. And cell latency can be as low as 5ms nowadays. 4g could only go as low as 200ms, 5g can theoretically go as low as 1ms, but obviously in practice that is almost impossible.
I did have fun with the novelty of moving multiple screens around like Minority Report but it really is just a novelty at this point
The resolution thing is actually almost solved IMO. I used my Quest 3 in AR mode almost every single day and the screens are perfectly fine for reading text or having a video on in the background.
Yeah there's still some screen door effect but it's really only noticeable when I look for it, it disappears in normal use.
And I genuinely can't think of a reason you would need 1000hz displays. Human eyes start to get steady motion at like 50-60 and 90-150 is when the normal eye starts to hit the limit.
I want a GTA style HUD at all times 🤪
Current wanted level by the police would be quite handy
Health bar, bank account balance, number of steps in the day, calories burned, my next calendar event
Arguably just gps instructions and step tracking superimposed on reality would be a great use of AR
Definitely. AR has a lot of potential, also could go sideways and have ads shoved in your peripheral view all the time too.
That is literally special software lmao
I'm not sure that wish will every be granted. You need some sort of specific software to get the hardware communicating.
overlaying ads on literally everything could be the end goal.
Apple is not that strong in the overlaying ads over everything department though.
But Apple will happily take a 30% cut of everything bought using the AR glasses.
We need laws restricting advertising
This AR obsession is utterly baffling to me.
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It's a mobile phone you don't need to hold.
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It's a mobile phone that never goes in your pocket.
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It's a mobile phone that is always on and has access to everything you see and hear.
It’s a bummer than those sound like bad things simply because corporate abuse is always a forgone conclusion. If your data was truly private and always entirely under your control and ONLY your control, those would be really attractive features.
Totally. I'd also love to train a LLM on my own personal data and preferences, but there is no way I'm trusting a corporation that information.
Some implementations also have the problem of constantly pointing cameras at non-consenting passers-by.
It's also a device that can literally put your imagination in front of you in the real world.
A corporate marketers imagination. Yes.
or what I chose to 3D paint in my living room... it's not all just corporate hellscape you know
Sounds like a fucking nightmare, but a wet dream to Big Tech.
That's pill. They just have to sugar coat it enough for everyone to swallow it (like we did with phones).
Exactly, it's literally just the next step more convenient than a smartphone. You know how many people have neck and back problems now from smartphones? Not having to look at your hands or even hold anything in your hands is going to be so much better. Not having to pull your phone out of your pocket for a map or a web search or a text or to translate stuff(visual or audio). Having both hands free while doing the things your current phone does, or new things a current phone can't do.
It's going to be so much nicer, and sure, the first one is gonna be expensive and not perfect, but it only needs nerds to start with anyway. We'll make sure it gets to a point where it doesn't annoy normal people and offers real value. And while the most popular ones will inevitably be the ones made with walled gardens like apple and meta, there will be good ones too for us nerds to move to once we have finished beta testing the mass market ones for you guys.
It's the same as every tech product cycle. You know the main thing preventing wider adoption of VR/MR/XR right now? Headsets don't look cool... so, once they are a pair of glasses, or sun glasses, the main barrier is gone. Can't say people wouldn't spend 500$ to 2000$ on something as un-necessary as a smartphone every couple of years. They very much do. And if you no longer need to buy or carry a smartphone, all of a sudden you got exactly that amount of money in your pocket.
I want an open source version of this https://www.evenrealities.com/
Yeah, open source third party ones come a little later. But they will come.
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Sure in a decade or so it might have matured enough to have shed all these issues
That's the point. They want to set themselves up so that when the issues are shed and it becomes a realistic product, they're already in a place where their product can be the one that takes over the market. If you wait until a product is viable before starting on development, you're too late.
Maybe it’s as simple as the next big product. When smartphones were new, nobody foresaw just how huge they’d become. Nobody could have foreseen what a force they’d turn Apple into. But now improvements are simply iterative, the market is nearing saturation, there’s not much room left to expand what’s next?
Maybe AR. It’s a really cool technology just now becoming practical to implement. Think of them as where smartphones were 15 years ago. Maybe they won’t go anywhere but imagine if they did! Imagine being the company most associated with the next hit tech product!
Apple risks stagnating if they don’t find a next hit product