
Why is Apple asleep at the wheel with VR? - codybrown
https://medium.com/@CodyBrown/please-apple-i-beg-you-don-t-ignore-the-vr-developer-community-6e6769228f4e#.79uxlaxgb
======
jballanc
Does no one remember the Eee PC? The whole "netbook" craze? It was at _least_
2-3 years that each quarterly earnings call some analyst would ask, like
clockwork, why Apple was letting the netbook market get away from them.

Officially, the answer that Apple repeatedly gave was that they "weren't
impressed with any of the current offerings" and that they would not "rush to
market with a product we're not proud of" (not exact quotes, but probably
close enough). The unspoken truth of the matter was that the margins on
existing netbooks were _razor_ thin. When Apple finally did introduce the
MacBook Air, it was more powerful and with better economics than anything else
on the market by far.

The Eee PC was discontinued in 2013. The MacBook Air (and now MacBook) are
still going strong today. Of course, this shouldn't be a surprise, Apple did
the exact same thing with the MP3 player.

I suspect that something similar is going on with VR (and a whole host of
other technologies). Until the first products hit the market and Apple has a
sense for how the price/features/demand equation balances out, they'll be more
than happy to sit on the sidelines. So no, I _don 't_ think there is a
skunkworks team fashioning an end-to-end solution. This isn't about Apple not
wanting to accommodate third party parts/devices. It's about building
something that is good and makes money.

~~~
codybrown
There's a big difference between Apple making their own VR hardware and
shipping a computer with a fast enough GPU to run other VR hardware (or
ability to have a fast enough GPU via something like the Razer Core).

The latter would be necessary for Apple in the growing VR ecosystem but it
could be great for many other areas that require an intensive GPU. And that's
the argument of the piece.

~~~
jballanc
Apple's target customer doesn't need a graphics card to do anything more
demanding than video editing. It's been probably at least 7 years since you
could get a Mac with anything like a top-of-the-line graphics card. Are there
potential customers that Apple is not grabbing by not having a high-end
graphics option? Sure!

But Apple doesn't care...

The thing about Apple is that, unlike almost all of their competitors, they
really don't care about a "Mac in every home". They'd much rather target
specific slices of the market where they can excel and make a lot of money
(think BMW, not Ford).

~~~
dogma1138
Apple's target customers tarted to switch to PC for video editing because
editing 4K> even on an Mac Pro is a nightmare because the GPU is weak as hell.

Rendering also takes considerably longer because the GPU performance is fairly
limited.

------
Mithaldu
Apple doesn't innovate. It combines proven technologies into polished
products.

When VR has proven itself, with R&D investments of other companies, Apple will
release a near-perfect refinement of all things VR and everyone will hail them
as the savior who brought VR to the world.

~~~
vlunkr
> It combines proven technologies into polished products.

Is that not innovation? Maybe technically the iPhone was just a combination of
existing technologies, but it went above and beyond them to the point that it
was essentially new.

~~~
dave2000
No, it's marketing more than innovation.

~~~
allsystemsgo
I'm sure their hardware engineers would beg to differ.

~~~
secstate
You mean the hardware engineers they brought onboard when the bought NeXT (OS
X)? How about Lala.com (iCloud)? Fingerworks (iOS)? Soundjam MP (iTunes)? We
can just go on and on here [1].

None of this is to say they don't have brilliant hardware engineers working on
things all the time. But the boldest moves Apple in the past decade and a half
have come from strategic M&As.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple)

------
Loque
VR is not yet 'here' and is not currently delivering, but it is promising a
lot.

The form factor alone has challenges which the public will not be willing to
sacrifice for the experience, which could turn out to be mostly a gimmick.
Some things people don't think about;

-) looking at your keyboard/input device whilst wearing a VR headset

-) being the same room as other people for prolonged periods of time with a headset

-) sharing experiences with other people close to you

-) what are you going to experience on VR, that needs VR so bad? Who is going to pay/develop and what is this content going to be... can it actually deliver, making good immersive software is incredibly hard.

-) and then cost...

~~~
smitherfield
To that we can add the biggest problem: nausea.

~~~
Kiro
We have a DK2 at the office and no-one has experienced any nausea. Anecdotal
but still, I think that was a much bigger problem with the DK1.

~~~
lukeschlather
What percentage of your office is women, and how old is the oldest person to
try it? I've heard some suggestion that the anti-nausea stuff is optimized for
men. And obviously older people will have more issues.

I recently picked up a first person game for the first time in quite a few
years, and I was surprised to discover I got a little motion sickness after a
few hours. It was fairly mild, but it's not an experience I'm keen to repeat
for the sake of entertainment.

~~~
Kiro
It's low and we're young. It's interesting though because I spoke to a female
acquaintance this weekend who said she tried an Oculus Rift and was nauseous,
after which I told her it was probably the old version. I had no idea there's
a suggested difference between the genders so now I'm not so sure anymore.

------
mattnewport
It also doesn't help Apple's VR prospects that many VR developers are coming
from games, even if they aren't working on gaming VR applications, and from
high end 3D games in particular because of the skill set overlap. Apple has
never really embraced games and particularly not high end desktop games and my
experience at a major AAA game developer (I'm now a freelance VR dev) was that
Apple was by far the worst partner to work with of any of the platform holders
(and we worked with pretty much all of them).

Apple gets a lot less love overall from game developers than from web
developers because they don't appear to care about games and don't give the
kind of developer support game devs are used to from other platform holders
and hardware companies. Even if they were to announce something in the VR
space it would take a lot of changes to their approach for that to change I
feel.

------
djrogers
On Oct 22nd, 2001 Apple was asleep at the wheel with MP3 players.

On June 28th 2007, Apple was asleep at the wheel with smartphones.

On January 26th, 2010, Apple was asleep at the wheel with tablets.

I'm not trying to claim Apple is definitely in VR, but if you don't know by
now that Apple is committed to not announcing products that aren't ready to
show/sell, then you haven't been paying attention.

*edit formatting

------
PinguTS
VR has its use cases. But the question is, will it be like 3D for mass market?
Everybody praised 3D when it started a few years back. But now 3D seems to be
dead, with the few exceptions like movie cinemas. Even most of the TV
manufacturers seems to get rid of it.

So what about VR? Only a hype by the tech savvy community and the lost and
forgotten in a few years when it should be ready for mass market?

~~~
mattnewport
Have you tried any of the consumer VR headsets? My experience is that nobody
makes the comparison with 3D TV any more after trying high end VR.

~~~
berberous
Seriously, was anyone ever hyped on 3D TVs? It always felt like a marketing
push. I don't know a single person that was ever excited by it. Whereas the
excitement from people who have tried VR is palpable.

~~~
mattnewport
Yeah, speaking for myself I was never excited by 3D TV or movies but I quit my
job to work full time on VR because I'm so excited about the possibilities.

Game developers can be a pretty cynical bunch. I worked with a lot of seasoned
devs who were totally blase about getting an Xbox One or PS4 on their desk
years before they launched but were genuinely excited even by the DK1.

------
muglug
I just bought my first Windows PC in 13 years to power a VR headset.

And after removing all the unnecessary HP crapware, driver installation
headaches and navigating the weird hybrid UI, I was reminded of how much I
haven't missed.

------
bryanlarsen
"I’m willing to bet there is a high stress team in the basement of Apple
working on an End to End VR solution but it could be years before it sees the
light of day."

Sure, that sucks for developers and us on the bleeding edge, but it doesn't
hurt Apple one bit. At the most optimistic, it'll take 2-3 years for VR to
become mainstream, and as long as Apple comes out with a polished Apple-like
solution by then, they won't miss out on the market. If their offering is
compelling then content will be ported to it.

If they wait much longer than 2-3 years competing solutions may achieve
critical mass.

At this point, releasing any solution before nVidia's Pascal and/or AMD's
Arctic Islands is available would be just silly. Maybe we'll see something in
September.

------
BuckRogers
Myopic article and bad clickbait where the author doesn't attempt to think big
at all. How do you know they're sleeping at the wheel? Because they haven't
enabled OSX VR?

I don't believe that console/PC VR will be the VR that makes it in the end.
Small tablet (mobile phone) VR is where it will land and reach massive
success.

The industry needs to keep the phone upgrade cycle working, people already
reduced their reliance on their PC and laptop with their phones.

Samsung is nailing it with GearVR. High res, high powered phones are going to
iterate until people simply put their phone in a $100 headset and experience
VR that way. It'll be cheap to become a social experience, watching sports in
3D and as much gaming as people will want in that mode.

------
greenspot
I still do not see any significant added value from VR except a bit higher
immersion at the cost of more head movement.

But the head movement will be limited, nobody wants to do 180-360 degree turns
in their living room and walk around. The key of video games _is_ to sit and
barely move and still be able to control a muscle packed fighter or whatever.
Looking around can be fun but at the end I will do only small 5-20 degree
turns (left , right, up, down) and then a big screen creates a similar level
of immersion with no movement required.

Maybe we haven't find the killer use case yet but I assume it will be like
with 3D screens, the added value of a 3D screen to a normal screen is so small
that nobody will care.

------
codybrown
Don't know if this comment will make a difference but its worth saying, before
you make a comment here, to mention some context on what VR hardware you've
tried.

I've tried the consumer Oculus, the HTC Vive, and the Hololens.

------
Cshelton
Note: Have not read article, going from title.

Apple is usually not a first to market type. They are a first to market with
an amazing, polished, product type. They'll wait to see what gets proved in
the market and what doesn't.

~~~
smt88
> _They are a first to market with an amazing, polished, product type_

That hasn't been true for a long time. The iPad might have been the last
product fitting that description, and it was released in 2010.

~~~
simonh
Not the Apple watch, which is selling faster than the iPhone or iPad were at
this point after launch and has captured ~70% of the smart watch market?

Ok, 'amazing' and 'polished' are aesthetic judgements on which reasonable
people can disagree. How much better would it have to do to count, in your
opinion?

~~~
smt88
The iPod, iPhone, and iPad redefined (you might even say created) their
categories. People have argued that tablets are fairly useless in the end, but
the iPad still made tablets mainstream and is arguably still the best tablet.

The watch did none of those things. I saw lukewarm reviews at best, and I've
never met anyone who raved about having one. Capturing 70+% of the smart watch
market is probably more a function of demographics, since a smart watch is a
huge luxury, than of the quality of the product.

How much better would Apple have to do? It would have to make smart watches
mainstream. For VR, it would have to make VR mainstream. That's the bar that
they set in the past.

(Note that I despise Apple and am certainly not just being nostalgic.)

------
minalecs
As someone that works in the VR industry where I think Apple can make the
biggest difference would be in the self contained headset using their mobile
components. Google is reportedly already doing this,
[http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/google-is-reportedly-
buildi...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/google-is-reportedly-building-a-
standalone-vr-headset-not-powered-by-a-pc-or-smartphone/).

Think something like the Samsung Gear but an all in one headset thats nicely
designed. Out of all the current available headsets, I think the PS is the
best designed and best fitting. I think Apple could do better.

------
mikhailt
The article doesn't go into details as to why Apple should be doing anything
with VR that isn't a) a proven technology nor is it b) anything more than a
fad.

I've heard of the same thing being said about 3D TV, it quickly died a few
years. I have a 3d Projector but never used it. I've tried a few 3D movies but
prefer the standard vision.

In addition, we went through the VR fed back in the 90s, just like 3D TV, it
died out after a few years.

Google Glass itself died out very quickly as well.

I have zero intentions of wearing a VR headset all day long, so this is ruled
out for general computations. Gaming? I've stopped gaming many years ago. So,
what is the purpose of VR or even AR for me?

The one single benefit that could convince me to wear an AR glass (Google
Glass style) all day long if it comes with closed captioning support for real
life, that to me as a hard of hearing person would provide so much benefits.

~~~
bsbechtel
>The article doesn't go into details as to why Apple should be doing anything
with VR that isn't a) a proven technology nor is it b) anything more than a
fad.

You could say the same about cars, but Apple is supposedly working on building
one. The same could be said about watches before the Apple Watch was released
too. I agree with your point, but I'm just playing devil's advocate.

~~~
pessimizer
Cars and watches are definitely proven technologies and not fads.

~~~
bsbechtel
Electric/self-driving cars are not proven technologies.

------
nilkn
I'm really surprised at how much skepticism there is here towards VR. I have a
feeling a large majority of the commenters here have simply never tried the
latest offerings and/or are not up-to-date on where the field is.

The consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are both _very_
good. In particular, Oculus has very much already taken the Apple approach to
VR. The final Rift has a high-end, premium design, including a lot of quality-
of-life enhancements that feel like they came straight from Steve Jobs, like
an obsession with making the cable as thin and lightweight as possible.

Oculus is pushing hard for a completely vertically integrated product. They're
designing the software and the hardware specifically for each other and aren't
very interested in supporting anything outside their ecosystem. They're having
developers produce titles specifically for the Rift to maximize the quality of
the user's experience.

Even the box they're shipping the Rift in is premium: [http://3dprint.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/box1.jpg](http://3dprint.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/box1.jpg)

The Touch motion controllers, expected to ship later this year, are similarly
premium, and they don't just track their own locations in space but also offer
basic finger and gesture recognition. They also have a small, lightweight
design, enabling fine interactions with virtual objects.

Frankly, I can't think of what Apple could bring to this space even if they
tried. Oculus has already done all the classic things that Apple does, and
Apple is extremely inexperienced with game development.

With regard to the HTC Vive, I would argue that it's a little less polished
and premium than the Rift, but it's also the first mover for fully tracked
motion controllers, so I regard it as one of the most innovative products of
the last five years. It's highly unlikely Apple is going to find a way to be
more innovative, and even then by the time they enter the market the Vive and
Rift will have moved on and both will be equally premium by that point.

IMHO, Apple has absolutely no chance in VR outside of smartphones, because
Oculus has already played all of Apple's traditional tricks and Apple has no
experience with games. Mobile VR is an area where they might excel, though the
screens in the current iPhones are not nearly good enough to compete with the
S7 and Gear VR, so at the very least they'd need to design future iPhone
screens with VR in mind. This would mean both increasing the resolution and
trying to maximize the pixel fill ratio.

Then there's the problem of positionally and wirelessly tracking the
smartphone user's location in 3D space, a problem that Oculus and Google are
already tackling. Google has Project Tango and Oculus has John Carmack working
on this problem. Once they achieve this goal, Apple will be even further
behind with even smartphone VR.

~~~
tmikaeld
Was thinking the same thing. I've had both DK1 and DK2 of the Oculus headsets
and have followed VR from the start to the now and there have been SO much
happening with hardware and software that it's hard to grasp!

There is so much hardware for body tracking, environment tracking and soon
Magic Leap that Apple really will be irrelevant when or if they enter the
market.

I mean, just consider the patents involved here - it will be hell for them to
enter!

------
codybrown
How did this post drop from the front page to the 7th page in less than a few
minutes?

~~~
wmil
I don't know the specifics of the algorithm that HN uses, but reddit used to
factor in 'post velocity'.

Assuming HN does something similar then a relatively small number of quick
early upvotes can send something to the front page.

A more mixed response from front page only viewers will send it crashing down.

------
tangue
Apple created Quicktime VR before sunsetting it, in a sense they _pioneered_
VR

~~~
berberous
Here's Apple's homepage from 1997 [0]: "MOVIES FROM MARS: QuickTime VR takes
you out of this world"

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/19970715124703/http://www.apple....](https://web.archive.org/web/19970715124703/http://www.apple.com/)

------
ebbv
If I was running Apple I wouldn't be wasting my money going into VR either.
It's nothing but hype right now, and frankly I don't see it going much beyond
that with any of the products that are on the horizon.

------
anonyfox
Personally I don't care much for VR in general. It's more like the new opium
for the masses once it's affordable. While VR promotes escaping in virtual
realities (hence, the name), Apple is looking for ways to improve your actual
world with it's products (no marketing intended). This is where AR will
matter, not VR. Google kinda pioneered here with Glass, Apple gave it a shot
with it's wearable devive (watch), and I'm super excited what will come next!

Alone glasses that don't suck visually (people shouldn't notice the difference
from a distance) and an all-day-battery-life would be features I'd spend $1000
upwards on, just because.

~~~
calgoo
I agree, im really looking forward to AR systems. They are just so much more
useful then VR. Sure, VR has its places like gaming, movies, documentaries
etc. but AR is something that could be implemented in our daily lifes to
really enhance them. The social network could actually extend into the real
world.

