[1] SimulaVR: Headsets Delayed (simulavr.com) 8 points by Philpax 1 day ago
The Vision Pro is based on their iOS (iPad/iPhone) ecosystem for their 2D apps, so you won't be able to use powerhouse office apps. It seems instead more geared towards the passive consumption of information, entertainment, and casual gaming, whereas we're trying to build something that can realistically replace a (Linux) laptop.
I'm not sure what Apple is thinking strategically, but they're structurally incentivized to cannibalize their iPad sales over their macbook sales (since their iPads are their weakest product in their lineup in terms of sales).
FWIW, it appears that Apple themselves don't see it as that. They are focusing on consumption for the initial release, but there are clear plans to bring "full" macos apps to Vision Pro.
They haven't released everything, but what you need to know is in the category they're placing AVP: computer. They refer to it as a computer, repeatedly. Not a mobile device. And, all of their computers run Xcode. I would be very surprised if we don't hear more about that by next year.
Creators can use the Vision Pro as their Mac's display, and/or run Office directly on Vision Pro.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-vision-pro-can-be-used-...
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23749947/apple-vision-pro-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office#Mobile_versio...
I see the vision pro 3-5 years from now being part of anyone's workflow that currently uses 3+ screens. And I don't see how this kickstarter competes. So just arguing "yeah but apple din't think of ..." is not encouraging.
1. The passive vs active framing applies primarily to non-Pro iPads. I don't think it can be reasonably argued the $3k Vision Pro is attempting to cannibalize low end iPads. iPad Pros are very different beasts that are designed for a particular type of creative output, and are very capable general purpose computing devices now.
2. There's no particular incentive to cannibalize iPad over Mac, its hard to fathom what dimension that makes sense on. They're happy to cannibalize any product, but their main MO is 'look what cool shit we can do with the latest tech' and Vision Pro is today's version of that. Apple is demonstrably way more interested in building out iOS/iPadOS and we've seen that over the past 10 years, to the point Mac users had to basically revolt to get attention.
3. Of course Vision Pro is based on iPad ecosystem, as its a far more modern set of conventions better suited to mixed modal input than Mac. That isn't a reflection of VP's purpose, but of engineering and design realities - it's far easier to grow iPad/iOS into a top tier spatial computing OS and ecosystem.
While MacOS is wonderful, it's really a product of a particular conception of computing, and shoehorning a 40 year old desktop OS paradigm into entirely new input modalities and ergonomic contexts makes little sense. The puck isn't going anywhere new, the desktop OS modality is baked. Apps will need to adapt to the wondrous new capabilities and constraints of the platform.
Looking at your presentation [1] it's clear the ergonomics are going to be a sticking point, which is a combined hardware & app ecosystem problem: the novelty of windows everywhere bumps up against the human factors / ergonomic fatigue constraints of moving one's head around around more than a few degrees (and whatever you do, don't optimize for looking up!), and app windows with tiny UI elements are going to be similarly fatiguing and unable to adapt to the promise and limitations in accuracy of gaze tracking.
There's a reason WinCE's desktop OS paradigms failed in PDAs whereas iOS succeeded - you need to reinvent the experience when you move modalities. I would argue the exact same thing will happen in AR/VR: sticking with a desktop OS paradigm is a losing proposition.
Just my 2c. Personally I really want to see a variety of offerings and possibilities in the market but I also want them to be based on sound reasoning and approach, which I go into a bit in this essay on category-defining products [2].
Very close to the Vision Pro for 1/5 the price, acts more like a peripheral and works on the 3 major operating systems. It's (supposedly) also going to be side-loadable and maybe even more hackable, OpenXR compatible
It's by the folks who make the https://immersed.com/ app
MRTV interview from earlier today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ic_uqEGI18
I'm back to super pessimistic on this tech... I too want simula to ship but I keep also maxing out my laptop on ram and compute and cooling and battery...
I'm rooting for them but I can't help in a financially signifigant method
Not disputing your claim per se, but Google had a project called Daydream back at least as early as 2017 (though seems earlier) and rolled that into Area 120 projects. They canned it at some point in 2021 I believe.
Whereas SimulaVR seems to have started working on this in 2018 per their YC app (but perhaps earlier?) https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/wiki/YCW19-Application
SimulaVR is creating a full computer built into a VR headset for production work.
Also, I'm guessing it's much easier to put together a laptop from off-the-shelf components than to create a VR headset.
Whether their potential customer base is large enough for success is a question I have, too.
My fear is that they'll want to make the system as like commercial offerings as possible, which will actually make it less appealing for nerds like me.
Besides which, being able to pan your vision around virtual monitors will make the resolution go a lot further.
It would have been a much easier pitch to those of us who already understand the caveats of this technology at present state, and we're already believers in the idea. Many VR people are using their current generation HMD's for productivity already despite the downsides.
It seems like it would have been a more obvious route to the type of people who are most likely to be your early adopters, and additionally avoids associating your operation with crypto which still carries a stigma.
I have a lot of respect for Vitalik, but I'd much rather hear the opinion of someone like Thrillseeker for a device like this.
But we actually do have a discussion ongoing with ThrillSeeker about a headset test/video, and we hope it gets made :]
Because the Metaverse mantra is more linked to crypto than the VR space.
I've also seen a16z invest in far less (pitch decks and hand-wave demos). So my read on the feedback is they've made too much progress on one front (enough to show a16z that they're not a compelling seed investment) but not enough progress on the other front (enough to warrant a PMF A round). Doesn't seem like the most fun spot to be in, and I know how hard this part of the stretch is. Good luck!
> I've also seen a16z invest in far less (pitch decks and hand-wave demos). So my read on the feedback is they've made too much progress on one front (enough to show a16z that they're not a compelling seed investment) but not enough progress on the other front (enough to warrant a PMF A round). Doesn't seem like a fun spot to be in.
That's how I feel as well, given feedback from other VCs we've applied at. Amplify told us roughly "too big for a seed, too small for a series A" after five meetings or so.
My guess is that there will indeed be a lot of excitement in 2024 (at least in Apple land) and then it's going to drop off again in 2025. That's not necessarily a terrible thing though.
Meta has sold something like 25 million headsets. The market is already bigger than many people realize and maybe it's big enough. It doesn't need to 10x and if it did, there's more than a small chance that kind of growth would end up being bad thing. Maybe a16z not biting means enshittification has been delayed.
Apple's headset is really cool, but is being built over iOS for 2D apps, so isn't realistically going to replace someone's laptop as their primary computing device.[1]
I think you are likely too early to market, making it a hard sell for a mass market in the short term. If you can survive long enough I think you can do well, however.
There's problems with the software that need to be solved before we ship, but it's not with the UI side of things. That's not to say that the UI is perfect (it really isn't), but it's functional and more importantly: can be changed at any time, unlike hardware.
More specifically: if we ship 125 units, we lose roughly ~$5K per headset. If we ship 250 units, we lose roughly ~$2K per headset. If we ship 1,250 units, we're operating at a slight profit with a couple of years of runway. If we ship 10,000 units, our margins approach 45% (at least on our pure hardware offering; we'd like to layer in some software offerings as well).
Unfortunately, the most costly part of the project is the very beginning. But we think these sales targets are doable if we're able to get our operation off the ground (with customers able to see shipped units being used to replace laptops in the wild).
Four figure drop for an open source darling project? Maybe.. but it is too big of an ask for me to strap a bunch of dev boards and desktop components to my cranium.
