> Face computers are the future, but the world as we know it isn’t quite ready. That’s the conclusion both Apple and Meta have arrived at.
Says the tech columnist at Verge, pushed by our tech overlords at Apple and Meta. Call me a Luddite, call me and old man, but this is one trend I'll fight to my last breath. I mean, is the public at large really thinking "You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen. What would be great would be if I spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen!"? I wish Nickelodeon would rebroadcast their prescient 30-year-old PSA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTYTtafjNo
It's clear large tech companies (or, really, any company) aren't satisfied until they've occupied 100% of your available time/budget/appetite, etc. (Coke famously talked about something like "drink share", i.e. the worldwide consumption of total fluids that Coke provided. One of their biggest "competitors" was water.) Don't get me wrong, my friend has a Quest 3, and I think it's really fun to play games on - for 20-30 mins or so, and then do something else. Similarly, I could imagining donning a headset for a meeting if it really provided an "in the same room" quality - and then taking it off to do something else.
But this excitement that the humans in Wall-E apparently had too much of their peripheral vision not occupied by a device is not an excitement I, or hopefully most other people, share.
I find myself balancing two conflicting attitudes: "face computers are the future" and "face computers are a solution looking for a problem". I honestly can't decide. Often I look to young people to help me decide - what are young people doing (with a new technology)? Are they embracing it? Rejecting it? Honestly, I don't see young people really embracing "face computers" at all. A handful of youngs, playing a few games, but that's about it. Makes me think "face computers" are more of a solution looking for a problem to solve, and that problem just doesn't exist.
VR is a super cool technology, and I am all for cool technology. However, I only see potential for VR in a few areas. Obviously gaming is one of them. I also really like the idea of being able to take a massive workspace with me anywhere I go (triple 4K monitors from the comfort of a recliner? Oh yeah!). But I don't think that the vision of everybody walking around in headsets all day long is going to happen. Sure, I might replace the monitors at my desk with a VR headset, but I'm not going to use the headset more than I used my monitors. VR is primarily a drop-in productivity tool, not a life-changing invention to replace my reality.
Disclaimer: I've never actually tried VR myself, although I have a feeling I'll grab a headset at some point in the next few years (maybe the alleged Valve Index 2/Deckard headset).
One potential use for VR is concerts or other big events. I think it would cool to experience a concert with a VR headset. I mean, it wouldn't replace the real thing, but it might be a cool, less expensive alternative, slightly better than live-streaming on a laptop or iPad.
The worst thing that can happen to these companies is for parents of the current young generation to get realllyy addicted to them.
What will happen is the kids will be sick of it and do the opposite . Teenagers will want nothing to do with the tech their parents use.
We millennials became hopelessly addicted to social media, and many were predicting that therefore gen z would eschew this technology. That is not what happened, and gen z is more addicted than anyone.
I'd argue that, for Meta and their customers, the “problem” does exist: Totally immersive ads you cannot escape. It's just that nobody else cares about that.
>You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen.
People already spend most of their time in front of computer screens today so you can say the same thing about the effects of the smartphone revolution.
In my childhood, to use the computer and play games, I had to come how from school, and only then I could indulge in this hedonism, meaning I spent most of the day without a computer. But if you look at kids today, most are on their phones most of the time anyway even during school, there's no more separation between computer time and 'other' time.
People are always ON now, always connected for the entirety of their waking lives, for better or worse. There's this trend in mental health of limiting social media and technology use, which is good, but I doubt society as a whole would take measures to artificially limit this for everyone the same way we limit consumption tobacco, alcohol.
> but I doubt society as a whole would take measures to artificially limit this for everyone the same way we limit consumption tobacco, alcohol.
I disagree. I think there is a real awakening that ubiquitous connectivity, and especially social media use, has a detrimental effect to individuals and society at least on par with tobacco or alcohol. I already see progress being made in 2 areas (not commenting on the wisdom of any individual proposal, as implementation is complex and difficult, just on an emerging consensus that these are problems):
1. limitations on childrens' use of social media and other online services
2. increasing public understanding that the issue isn't so much the tech channel, but the "algorithms" designed to hijack our dopamine pathways and lead us down
"personalization" rabbit holes.
Really depends on the direction the technology develops in.
For instance, as someone whose living is made with computers, if the computer I carry no longer needs a screen of its own and can just use my (sun)glasses as a display that’d be a significant paradigm shift and improvement in practical portability, essentially putting my multi-monitor desk setup anywhere and untethering me from my desk, taking remote work to the next level. I could do my job just as effectively sitting in a local park or enjoying the sea breeze in the shade, which sounds amazing.
> spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen
Matt Ferrell makes the point that the AVP is highly unlikely to increase your screen time. The only use for wearing the AVP outside or while interacting with others IRL is to make clickbait Youtube videos.
OTOH, he claims it is great at replacing your screen time. It's great for watching movies, playing some types of video games and doing some types of office work.
Screens that reveal the outside world (whether pass through video or other technology) have the potential benefit of allowing the user to exist in that real world for a greater overall duration of time (even if they are technically still "looking at a screen"). Lots of caveats of course, but I'm optimistic.
But... I also know it's ridiculously (increasingly) common to see people walking around in public while looking at a phone with Airpods in their ears.
So no - wearing a Vision Pro isn't in the future for most people, but smart glasses might be but only for those sorts of people. Not you or me. But for the masses? Maybe.
> You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen. What would be great would be if I spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen
This is a strawman. Let people do what they want to do. Since you don't like staring at screens, don't stare at screens.
What 'big vision'? There are no indications that Meta has given serious thought to actually using the Quest as a computer rather than just a game console. (I'm counting full immersion meeting apps and Horizon World under 'games', since they're still basically just toy functionality.)
Article was mostly about the Ray Ban Meta smart glasses as AR people can actually adopt and use now, vs Apple's AR you will be able to do at some point, but right now requires completely impractical and doofy hardware.
Personally, I'm hoping Brilliant comes from behind and laps everyone. The tech is not particularly ambitious (more HUD than AR), but the open source philosophy is by far the best way to go.
If the Ray Ban Meta get a small little screen in the next generation, even if it's $50-$100 more, I'll buy them. I still might buy the current generation once summer rolls around and I actually need sunglasses.
They've got the same AR as every other pair of sunglasses, tinted lenses, plus a camera and a speaker, no? The comparison to the Vision Pro, right now, makes about as much sense as comparing the glasses to AirPods.
Meta has done a significant amount of work on a range of productivity and general computing use cases. They are clearly exploring VR/AR as a full platform, not just a game console. They have almost feature by feature parity with the Vision Pro, plus a game console on top of that.
A few examples:
Their past 2 headsets have had high quality passthrough cameras for MR. Quest Pro was specifically focused on productivity in a very similar way to the Vision Pro.
2d apps are supported and quite a few are available including MS Office apps, social media and messaging apps.
I don’t know what you mean by calling desktop mirroring apps a toy since the MacBook screen mirroring is exactly one of the hallmark Vision Pro features and apps like Immersed, Virtual Desktop and Horizon workrooms do the same thing in MR or VR.
There’s keyboard and mouse support for 2d productivity and screen sharing just like Vision Pro.
They have a a corporate sales program that includes remote device management specifically for corporate and industrial use cases.
And there been quite a lot of research work on codec avatars in virtual meetings that are extremely similar to Vision Pro. This is one thing that Apple seems to be ahead of Meta on.
The Quest Pro could have used some of "this vision". $1500 work computer. They included eye tracking, but then removed the depth sensor, severely limiting AR and making the passthrough ML based and wobbly. Resolution wasn't there for monitor replacement. Floundered in the market, so price drop to $999. Very few active daily drive users (I've not heard of one).
Big screen beyond and Apple Vision Pro had a much better vision and product execution, eating Quest Pro's lunch.
And of course with any of the Quest products privacy is a major consideration, and to opt out of account requirement and data collection one needs to look to enterprise versions which are much more expensive.
I hope we nip this 'face computers' term in the bud. Maybe I'd get used to it eventually, but wouldn't it be better to have a name that was so good that you didn't need to get used to it?
A lot of grand words that boil down to 'Meta makes 'em cheaper'. Let's not kid ourselves. Zuck's big vision was pretty similar to Apple's (except mainly derived from a dystopian Sci-Fi novel), it's just that their engineers didn't go as far (also because they were targeting a completely different price range, and had some baggage from starting off of a product that was meant to be something else).
Not really? From what I've seen of Meta's keynote presentations, their big vision has been you block out reality to transport into some stupid Second Life world where everybody's a silly little avatar, and you play virtual sports and attend virtual concerts.
Nah it’s materialistic garbage. It’s like winning a race no one is watching. Most of the people outside the tech community have no interest in this stuff. There is no buzz, no talk and no budget for it.
People are barely even interested in their own phones these days. They are as functionally moot as each other.
The only buzz I hear is people want less technology and more connection with each other in the real world.
OP isn't saying people aren't on their phones. OP is saying the general public don't care about which phone they or anyone is using, as they're all functionally identical.
I believe there are some use cases for this technology that are beneficial. For access, I think there is great value in spatial computing technology and AI for automatic translation and transcription. I'm autistic and where I've found so much benefit from noise cancelling headphones I think (at a future state) a light, unobtrusive device that could allow me to filter an otherwise sensory stimulating environment into one more tolerable AND allow me to work at the same time sounds like an ideal environment.
I currently own an Apple Vision Pro and I can see its limitations but I don't think it's an altogether negative direction to focus attention either.
> Meta decided to build cheaper gadgets that people want to use now.
Let's not deceive ourselves. We all know that Meta is capable of neither designing nor manufacturing Apple Vision Pro. That's not a bad thing. Every company plays its own strengths. There's no point pretending that it was a deliberate decision.
The engineers at Apple aren’t somehow imbued with any sort of special intellect that the engineers at Meta lack to do the same thing. And to be clear here, I’m no fan of Meta. But, in echoing @laserlight here, let’s not pretend that the engineers at Meta are any less capable than the engineers at Apple. There are plenty of brilliant engineers in both companies.
Why does the US still not have universal healthcare? Europe/China aren't somehow smarter or "health geniuses" - they just put in the effort and made it a priority to provide a well-functioning service.
Its tsmcs chip not apples though, anyone can up and order something of those sort of specs from them and meta has plenty of money to wave around at a crowded bar for attention.
TSMC is a fab, not a chip designer. Apple designed their own chips with in-house engineering talent. Due to how the silicon supply chain works no-one but TSMC can make those chips so everyone needs to use them. Also Meta can't just waive around money and get the most advanced chips; apple has bought out all the production for some time.
You really think if it was that easy to compete with Apple's SoCs, Google wouldn't have done it long ago for the Pixels? Or someone in the Android space would step in to compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips? Samsung hasn't been able to do it for years with their Exynos line.
It's unfortunately far, far more true than whatever lead Meta still has over Apple on the VR headset side.
Also it's not just the chip itself, but moreso the whole hardware-sofrware vertical integration. Despite being a decade-long Apple-hater, ever since I got an M2 max macbook from work I simply have never touched my Windows/Linux Thinkpads again. The difference in user experience isn't even on a generational level, but more of a I-can't-imagine-how-Apple's-competitors-can-begin-to-close-this-gap level. Sadly I think all this talk of Quest-vs-AVP war is just an illusion, the outcome is very much preordained at this point.
Having read it at the time and now again I'd be surprised if Apple would do any better in his performance metrics. Big companies are, almost by definition, slow. The breakneck speed he wants to see will never happen in a company with thousands of people, thousands of opinions and many layers of management.
So, while that is a sad reminder that things could be far better in theory, I don't see how it supports that Meta couldn't produce a Vision Pro if they wanted to.
Doesn't matter. The US military is going to be a big customer for Apple. After all, the only thing that matters for training is that it works flawlessly.
Then they’ll get it second hand like many people get iPhones. You can even be 2 or 3 generations behind so long as the tech was the best at its time, it’ll endure.
You make the assumption that most people buy iphones for full price. They still offer free iphones through carrier subsidy. For other apple products you need sufficient credit to get approved for their installment payment plans because its through the Apple card and not subsidized by the carrier.
Says the tech columnist at Verge, pushed by our tech overlords at Apple and Meta. Call me a Luddite, call me and old man, but this is one trend I'll fight to my last breath. I mean, is the public at large really thinking "You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen. What would be great would be if I spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen!"? I wish Nickelodeon would rebroadcast their prescient 30-year-old PSA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTYTtafjNo
It's clear large tech companies (or, really, any company) aren't satisfied until they've occupied 100% of your available time/budget/appetite, etc. (Coke famously talked about something like "drink share", i.e. the worldwide consumption of total fluids that Coke provided. One of their biggest "competitors" was water.) Don't get me wrong, my friend has a Quest 3, and I think it's really fun to play games on - for 20-30 mins or so, and then do something else. Similarly, I could imagining donning a headset for a meeting if it really provided an "in the same room" quality - and then taking it off to do something else.
But this excitement that the humans in Wall-E apparently had too much of their peripheral vision not occupied by a device is not an excitement I, or hopefully most other people, share.