- Joined
- Aug 15, 2020
- Posts
- 9,761
I'm a huge VR user. Getting ready to hop in now in fact. I've never tried the Vision Pro, but I don't think it's for me.
I think the biggest problem is that Apple took a gaming device and tried to turn it into something that isn't a gaming device. Cool idea. But so far gamers seem to be the only major group interested in VR. Most people don't want to put on a headset to answer emails and read texts or do any other non-gaming things. Not in large numbers. I know some people like to watch TV/Movies in their headsets, but I don't think that's a huge number of people either. Some people also liked 3D TVs. But clearly not enough people were interested to keep that business going.
Apple tried to create a new market and it seems no one is interested. Meta is discovering the same thing. They axed their business apps a while back. Now I've heard Horizon Worlds (basically social media in VR with games) is getting shut down. It seems the majority of their users are interested in gaming, but not much else beyond that. Finally the Quest will be serving one master (gaming) and it should be fantastic. They can strip the rest of the crap out of the OS and improve things a lot.
Sometimes Apple is able to exploit untapped markets to their advantage. This time I don't think the untapped market was nearly as big as they thought. I also don't think VR gaming is "about to explode" like I've been hearing for years. I think it will always remain a niche market. I know half a dozen people who have headsets and only one or two play on a regular (once a month) basis. The rest loved it for a while, then got bored with it.
I totally didn't think of the gaming possibilities because I'm not a gamer and I don't really recall Apple focusing on that on the release announcement. But that seems obvious now that you mention it.
Kind of related but not Apple specific, remember when the concept of smart glasses came out and everybody started freaking out over privacy concerns to the point of development being killed? It seems like they are right back at it and nobody seems to give a shit about privacy anymore. I think they might even be out on the market. Dunno. I just see headlines talking about different companies' smart glasses and not one headline hints at what they actually do or why I would want them. It's kind of bizarre. To me they still just seem like a personal subservience device ripe for abuse. Toss in some graphic AI and suddenly you're watching everybody walk around naked.