Too many people seem to be confusing prior product critical commentary being invalid with all product critical commentary being invalid.
Apple Vision Pro won't do much as a product - it'll struggle for even minimal adaption and will be eventually all but withdrawn within 24 months. The patents etc may eventually lead to a compelling product.
But I'd be very confident I could look back at this comment and be proven correct.
iPad commentary on launch always felt wide of the mark - use case was clear. iPhone was limited at launch but you could see the path forward. Vision Pro feels like it could never be 'evolved' into a mass market product - though maybe the patents could be taken and become something useful, albeit different.
Would you be willing to bet a token amount, say the current base cost of a Vision Pro ($3500), that in 48 months (giving you some buffer here) Apple has fully withdrawn support for the Vision line and does not release a new model? That’s the real test of confidence. I personally think you’re way off the mark and am willing to put money on the line. Are you?
I too would like to participate in this bet on your side.
I read their first paragraph and thought to myself that it was a reasonable stance, only to then be followed up with ridiculous stuff that straight up slides off the other end of the spectrum.
Gotta admire the confidence though, however misplaced it might be.
That was my initial reaction as well. Having said that I thought the same about the Watch and I turned out to be wrong about that. I still don't want one but all that means is I'm an outlier.
Irish company Manna have been doing this in two Irish suburbs for a number of years now. They're worth checking out - their CEO Bobby Healy often tweets interesting stuff around payloads, journeys per day, route maps etc. I've worked with them a little and think they're building something really interesting.
One thing that’s bothering me - the story text says it’s 32 bn kilometres from earth but looking it up it appears to be about 19 bn kilometres. Which is it?
I can definitely see a gap in the market for this now.
The present Twitter alternatives (Mastodon, Bluesky, Spoutible) are just too hobbyist or finicky.
Meta will presumably bring an ease-of-use to this service and, crucially, scale from minute 1. They're the building blocks of Twitter's current incumbency position, and Meta/Threads can replicate them straight out the gate.
That is a huge advantage.
On the other side of the ledger, the utility of Twitter keeps sliding. Not sure how many Hacker News users are Twitter users or what the crossover is, but the whole blue tick 'thing' has reduced the utility in one key surprising way: high quality replies under popular accounts are impossible to find. It's like if you could buy upvotes on Hacker News to get to the top almost. Secondarily to that is the stuff over the last few days with very low rate limits on how many tweets you can view - if you can't use a social network, it tends to stop being useful.
While I wouldn't say Threads is a slam dunk guaranteed success, I would say it's the most probable contender of all the ones out there.
Spurious enough comparison given there were phones, a developed phone market which was 150m+ globally even at that stage, and demonstrated clear use cases for an iphone (an ipod, a phone and an internet browser combined).
Yep it iterated and yep app store really rocket charged it beyond where it was envisaged on day one. But it was also an existing market, albeit one that was at the foothills of its potential.
AR/VR too is at the foothills of its potential. But the fundamental problem is: even when its potential is realised, it'll still just be relatively niche and relatively fringe. This stuff simply is not going to be mainstream in a serious way. And without being mainstream, there is no real revenue stream of utility for a company of Apple's size.
I have no idea why people are doing such backflips to come up with potential use cases but most of them just aren't runners. This will sell to an extent for Apple but it'll be a rounding error on their balance sheet at best - even in future versions - though I imagine a lot of the tech will end up elsewhere, so it won't be a complete lost cause for Apple.
The potential is to replace computers. In its current version, it is basically an iPad on your face. Look a little forward and it is a laptop on your face. Imagine that the price came down to $1500-2000 in a couple years, now you can buy an Apple Vision instead of a laptop. And you wouldn't need to buy a TV either. So this does have device consolidation potential like the iPhone did and it can tap into an existing market like the iPhone tapped into the phone markets.
I think previous AR/VR devices didn't quite have the right sweetspot of hardware features (too low resolution, tied to one spot, extra controllers), but this one looks like it might just do it. What it doesn't have is a low enough cost, so it will be a slow start. I'm also still curious if there will be a "killer app" that encourages people to get into it, but the long-term vision of spatial computing is itself enough of a killer feature. I just wonder how long that will take.
> Imagine that the price came down to $1500-2000 in a couple years, now you can buy an Apple Vision instead of a laptop. And you wouldn't need to buy a TV either.
I can compile code on my laptop - can I do that on a vision?
I can plug a xbox on my TV, or watch it with 4 people. Can I do that with a vision?
I think this replacing TVs is a really hard sell, except in remarkably niche people. Sitting on the couch together playing Nintendo just can’t be replaced, and apple surely doesn’t want to allow third party inputs, they want an internal app ecosystem, which Nintendo and PlayStation won’t ever do. (Xbox maybe). Laptop replacement, I can buy though. But only some fraction of those, nothing large, and certainly no larger than iPhone market share percentages.
Was going to reply along these lines. I was fortunate to live with someone who was working on the James Webb and telling me excitedly about it — back in 2006! Surely even with the various upgrades/spec changes/delays, things have moved sufficiently that whatever is started even today will be a marked upgrade.
In any event, many many areas to aim at, and relatively limited funding unfortunately.
On the one hand: Has badly lost its way on content. Can understand why other providers are stripping out legacy content (e.g. old BBC shows), but equally Netflix's own content has been very much expensive quantity over quality.
They're at risk of blowing their relatively dominant position.
On the other: the headline figures aren't terrible. Their boycott of Russia saw them lose 700k subscribers, while the net decrease is actually 200k. Their projection for Q2 is interesting, and clearly they have some basis for projecting a steeper decline.
Ultimately Netflix have moved from what looked like a very strong incumbent position into a keenly fought battle where content will decide which 2/3 streaming services people subscribe to. For me this year it's probably the third most watched after Disney+ and Apple TV... so is at risk of the chop if it doesn't come up with the goods soon. Can't imagine I'm alone.
Interesting point about the Russia loss. I doubt their stock would be down near as much if they'd had a slowdown to 500k net increase, as would otherwise be the case.
Not at all the same issue but vaguely relevant — I like the idea of ambiently joining some Twitter spaces without feeling obliged to contribute.
Would strike me as a decent trade off that non contributors should be able to join anonymously.
Whenever I’ve joined something in my specific area to date, I’m called on to contribute maybe half the time by the host - which is generally fine and I’m happy to, but sometimes you’re not able to… so it puts you off joining altogether.
That might be making it harder for smaller rooms to grow, if there's a lot of users less likely to join because of that. Whereas in big rooms you disappear in the crowd.
This is wonderful how this has ended up on the front page of Hacker News. It's one of my favourite pieces I've read in the last few years - I bought the book arising from it - I don't even like Bailey's! It's just a very neat story of product development, branding, etc.
Apple Vision Pro won't do much as a product - it'll struggle for even minimal adaption and will be eventually all but withdrawn within 24 months. The patents etc may eventually lead to a compelling product.
But I'd be very confident I could look back at this comment and be proven correct.
iPad commentary on launch always felt wide of the mark - use case was clear. iPhone was limited at launch but you could see the path forward. Vision Pro feels like it could never be 'evolved' into a mass market product - though maybe the patents could be taken and become something useful, albeit different.