AustinAg2K said:
agdoc2001 said:
ABATTBQ11 said:
We all get that it is Apple's first step. What I'm saying is that it's no different than anyone else's and lacks the vision of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Those devices had things that made them fundamentally different than anything else and they were first steps in different directions. This is a step in the same direction, and IMO the wrong one.
Like I said earlier, this isn't AR. It's VR with passthrough. They are different, and VR is the fundamental direction they are taking with this. Apple's not going to make AR or glasses the norm in 10 years because they're not doing anything to make it the norm right now.
Exactly. Say what you will about Microsoft's Hololens, but at least it was different. It was actually AR and was released 7 years ago. Modern day Apple is no longer an innovative company.
Also, consider Google Glass was around a decade ago and no one was interested. The new AR/VR sets do have more utility than Glass did, but one of the biggest complaints was that people looked ridiculous, which is still a major problem. The guy wearing the Vision Pro watching his kids was super creepy.
I do think AR/VR is going to be huge in our future, but I don't think the adoption is going to be anywhere near as fast as the smartphone adoption was. I think it's going to take someone figuring out that killer app, and right now they haven't done it. The Vision Pro just seems like a higher end version of everything that is already out there.
AR and VR certainly have a future, but it is much farther out than 10 years.
About ten years or so ago I saw a virtual mock up of a wall assembly automatically overlaid onto set of plan drawings. It was done using image recognition through a phone camera, and it was cool AF. You could move the phone around and that little virtual model would sit right there overlaid onto the drawings. The issue was building the model and registering it to the detail on the plans took time and money. It could be useful, but it wasn't economical.
The hardware and technology certainly exist for AR to be something we use on a daily basis, but it is the creation of the virtual augmentations and their coupling to the physical experience that is holding it back. AI and computer vision will certainly help break that barrier, but it's not there AFAICT.
Several years ago now I did some work to set up VR models and ergonomic reviews for some projects in development. This would have been mind-blowing and cool then, but it's not something that I look at and go, "OMG THIS IS THE FUTURE!" right now. There are similarly capable devices that already have content from developers out there.
For personal use, it's just a very high end VR headset. Unless Apple does away with the display and moves to a see through display like the HoloLens, this literally isn't going anywhere. It's something to use occasionally at home or the office for specific tasks, not some life changing device anyone is going to wear all day. Even if the form factor shrank and the battery life increased, it's still a screen over your face. No one is wearing that on the street or around the house or engaging someone else in casual conversation with it. That's why glasses are the Holy Grail of AR. And as much as we'll hear that this is the first iteration, that kind of design change is not the kind of change you see between model versions. You're talking entirely different technology and engineering to meet very different challenges. MS has spent years on that kind of development and isn't there yet. I don't see Apple making some giant leap after rolling this out.