
VR and the future of computing: awaiting its iPhone moment - gpresot
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21662548-virtual-reality-promising-technology-will-not-go-mainstream-its-current
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moron4hire
This article almost seems like the introduction to a different, better
article. Just as it gets past the obligatory "compare to the 90s" and "mention
porn" and "reference ugly devices" and "remind everyone AR is a thing", it
just ends.

As someone working in the VR industry, I guess I have a much higher exposure
to these sorts of articles. After a while, it just starts to look like
everyone is sitting in their coffee shops or bedrooms or what have you and
saying to themselves, "welp, if I don't say anything about VR, people are
going to label me irrelevant, so better see what everyone else is saying."
Hell, there isn't even a reference to 3D films and TVs! The Economist is
really falling down on the job here.

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mnemonicsloth
It is the introduction to a longer article.

[http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/2166248...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21662481-virtual-reality-flopped-1990s-time-its-
differentapparently-grand)

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dsugarman
I think it is more accurately awaiting is blackberry moment, or if we're
really honest with ourselves, it's palm pilot moment

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dharma1
Pretty low signal to noise ratio in this article

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digi_owl
iPhone moment?

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kriro
I think the author basically a shift from clunky VR hardware to slick consumer
friendly devices. I don't quite agree that that's exactly what happened with
the iPhone or that there actually is something similar to the Nokia phones
that are referenced in VR space but that's the idea from the article:

"""But the strongest advocates of the smartphone revolution, such as Nokia,
failed to anticipate how it would play out, with the result that others now
dominate the new industry. The turning-point was Apple’s iPhone. With its
touchscreen and elegant apps, it set the model for the entire industry. VR has
yet to have its iPhone moment. The idea is sound and the gear works, but
today’s chunky headsets are unlikely to conquer the mass market."""

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digi_owl
I love how they gloss over that iPhone was out for a year before it got any
kind of apps going. Hell, Apple was pushing "web apps" (glorified websites
basically) for that whole year.

Damn it, the original didn't even ship with UMTS (3G).

The only ones that was hot and bothered about it was those already invested
into the iTMS sphere, and MSM. The latter because for some reason their world
runs on Apple computers.

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quesera
That's revisionist. The release of the iPhone was a huge inflection point in
the industry. You can argue about how much was inevitable and how much was
innovative, but you can't dispute that the iPhone led the way.

