It has been clear from fairly early on the AVP should never have launched - it just has no reason to exist. I cannot escape thinking there must have been some internal argument where the choices ended up as kill the project or release what we have, and the latter was chosen because it was seen to be easier.
Let’s face it, without Zuck’s personal interest reality labs would have gone years ago.
It is one thing for companies with billions to burn them chasing non existent markets but when they attempt to drag in lots of smaller third parties in order to build demand for their platforms . . . well, developers should be a lot more skeptical. The low hanging fruit of the personal computing age appears to have been picked.
I’ve seen plenty of people who have found a legitimate use for it. And as many have pointed out it serves as a dev kit that also happened to be sold to consumers. It helps Apple and developers figure out what people actually want to use the device for.
There also seems to be a lot of people who find it to be a near perfect implementation of VR/AR, except for size/weight, price and perhaps the resolution and fov could be just a tad better.
These seem like things they could fix with a second gen non-pro headset.
The automatic eye adjustment and external screen may be an expression of an ultimate VR experience but can easily be dropped with a non pro version. With less heat the fans can be smaller. Perhaps they can start using those new piezo based blowers. The metal body and external battery pack will already help keep things cool despite the powerful chips and high power consumption.
The existence of the pro version will give a halo effect that will make it easier for Apple to sell a non pro version, even if it’s still more expensive than the most expensive Oculus headsets.
Whether they’ll increase resolution and fov is uncertain. They might wait until it can inherit the tech from a second gen pro version.
At least Meta has bootstraped a niche in the console market. They identified a market and can iterate on it. Apple seems content to provide essentially nothing to do on the device.
> the choices ended up as kill the project or release what we have
Yeah, kill the project would have made the shareholders very displeased.
I don't think what Apple has is incomplete, VR is just not all that. Immersion for most people is like a roller coaster — fun for a bit but who wants to ride all day?
Let’s face it, without Zuck’s personal interest reality labs would have gone years ago.
It is one thing for companies with billions to burn them chasing non existent markets but when they attempt to drag in lots of smaller third parties in order to build demand for their platforms . . . well, developers should be a lot more skeptical. The low hanging fruit of the personal computing age appears to have been picked.