It's such a fascinating difference in approach between Meta and Apple. Meta literally invites journalists in to walk around its lab, shows off their latest advances in academia (including all the limitations and problems). Meanwhile Apple works for 10 years in secrecy and even after they publicly announce are making anybody with access to the device use it in SCIF-like environment with a draconian NDA.
And then, Meta has no real interesting in delivering anything other than a product they can ship to millions of people on day 1 at a low price point, while Apple is actively cultivating exclusivity of access as a marketing tactic.
It’s more that Meta uses the showing of incomplete & currently not functional hardware/software as a marketing ploy.
Apple has never really done that (at least in the post Jobs return era). They demonstrate what their intention is… then release the device. Zip, except maybe some WWDC stuff in-between.
Which makes sense: Apple is Product Vision & UX focused, Meta (and most other companies) are Product Delivery & User Consumption focused.
Neither is wrong, they’re just aiming at different goals.
I was approached by both Apple and Facebook back in the days, and decided to join Facebook instead of Apple. Why? I like to be able to post about the research I do, and I didn't like the secrecy approach of Apple. I'm guessing that this is a big factor for more than just me when choosing a company to join, especially when you do interesting things that you want to be able to share with the world.
I remember reading that Mark Rober was at Apple (nobody knew about that!) and I just feel like that must have sucked massively for someone who loves making youtube videos to work in a place like that.
Another way of looking at it is - one company has a deep history of shipping successful and often innovative hardware products, and the other one doesn't.
It's hard to argue that that the one that ships is taking the wrong approach.
> Meta has no real interesting in delivering anything other than a product they can ship to millions of people on day 1 at a low price point
Ahm, are we forgetting the QuestPro? Meta tried to build their "Apple headset", 5x the price of a Quest2 and loaded with all the R&D features they could find. And it was a colossal flop. The whole thing is getting shutdown little over six months after release.
They forgot to include critical features like a depth sensor, they couldn't figure out what to do with the eye tracking in their software, face tracking wasn't a feature anybody wanted and reduced the battery dramatically when actually used, passthough cameras are a blurry mess, resolution is too low to work as actual desktop replacement, etc.
The whole thing, despite 5x the price, was firmly stuck at just being a slightly better Quest2. Meta spend the last seven years building a portable Oculus Rift, and they succeeded at that, but despite billions in R&D they haven't really managed to advanced VR beyond that point.
I think the biggest difference is Meta is happy to put out an incomplete product and iterate. The standard Quest 2 for example leaves a lot to be desired on the software side, but instead of waiting for years to perfect it they shoved it out there with the expectation that people would understand and accept that its very much an evolving platform.
Apples approach is that they wont release until its ready for use by the average joe. The expectation that you get it and it works out of the box without needing to be too technical is where they thrive.
This isn't to say one approach is better or worse, just different.
"Meta has no real interesting in delivering anything other than a product they can ship to millions of people on day 1 at a low price point"
Wow, how naive can you be?
Because Meta's forte is ads. The hardware is just the gateway to their ecosystem where they don't have to pay Apple/Google for access to users.
Companies' engineering blogs are just carefully curated marketing pieces with highly distilled technical info. It's still marketing and some people eat it up.
> Meta has no real interesting in delivering anything other than a product they can ship to millions of people on day 1 at a low price point, while Apple is actively cultivating exclusivity of access as a marketing tactic.
Apple literally ships millions of devices on day one (that is, on the exact day they announce they will ship it).
Edit: with very few notable exceptions like the wireless charger
I used to call this the startup model vs the Apple model
A startup begins a project often by announcing that it has almost succeed. Some open source projects and crowdfunded projects with a lot of pomp also take this approach. It is great(?) for fundraising. It is interesting that Meta chooses this since they are not looking for funding, but maybe they are looking to cultivate the same panache/ethos. A way to market to prospective employees, more than end customers.
Apple denies that its even doing something until after it has succeeded. And even then it will announce it on its own terms. The Putin regime also follows this model (eg 2014 annexation of Crimea). It is great for denying competition time to catch up.
apple can get away with being less polite. what it delivers is enough to motivate a certain level of tolerance.
apple is ecosystem. it is the front runner at the moment, and will be hard to beat.
ffs this is facebook and mark zuckerberg. how does the joke go? their faces are next to the word unlikable in the dictionary?
both meta and zuck are cultivating a rather incredible comeback story. for all the historical hateables, even with layoffs and rto, there are a lot of recent moves that are brilliant.
second place in a martial arts tournament. threads. llama. this.
both meta and zuck are starting to look downright likeable.
this is no accident, and no small feat.
tl;dr you seemed to have missed meta’s marketing tactic, possibly due to anti-apple bias.
Meta has a god-awful reputation and needs to do whatever they can to build goodwill with journalists and the public. If they think showing off half-finished vaporware is the way to do that, good luck to them.
You’re a bit biased if you think Meta is doing anything other than marketing here, just using a different tactic.
Meta has never showed off demo-able advanced R&D hardware publicly, even when they’ve had it, until now.
This is simply a second degree demo to Wall Street investors. Their analysts will either attend, or read reports from reputable experts.
They’ve sunk $40 Billion into this project with nothing to show. Apple has reportedly spent $20 Billion while underpinning it with healthy growth and profits.
Facebook shipped Quest 2 dev kits to partners that were physically disguised as clothing irons. The narrative you’re spinning is nonsense.
EDIT: You’re either Boz or a lieutenant judging by your comment history.
You only comment on topics related to Facebook competition and say things close to “interesting feedback” and occasionally expose yourself with specific phrases like “Thanks for sharing, it's always interesting to hear these kind of anecdotes!”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36351422
> There are two types of people: Those who think VR will change the world—and those who haven’t tried it yet.
>
> It’s an old saying, sure, maybe even a little cliché. And yes, there are skeptics out there—but we’d argue they just haven’t found the right VR experience to make them a convert []-)
Yep, I'm a skeptic. I tried it, and it was fine! Pretty fun, not that fun. Like going to Disney, I'm perfectly comfortable knowing that it's there, other people love it, and I'll go once every 20 years or so and have a decent time.
Maybe I just haven't had the right experience yet (I went to Epcot, not Star Wars World), but you could argue that about literally anything.
I'm actually someone that believed in VR until I tried it, and then I lost interest because I found it so underwhelming. In my opinion it just kinda sucks and certainly isn't worth the awkward inconvenience of strapping something on to your face. I think it even has limited appeal for niche applications like simulations and personally I'd prefer a multiscreen setup.
To each their own. I was someone that was excited to try VR for years and then said "that's it?" when I finally got a chance.
> As with Butterscotch Varifocal, the goal of Flamera isn’t to show something that’s viable for a consumer product—at least, not yet.
A bit surprising that these seem so far away from production. I think Apple is playing it properly here: Announce a product people really want, even if its very far into the future and may possibly not actually come onto the market for years. Use the feedback from the public to fine tune the product as it's developed.
Facebook seems now to be something like the company whose former HQ it inhabits: Xerox PARC. Potentially vital R/D happening in such a way as to have almost zero chance of actually becoming a product.
I can't be excited for Butterscotch or Flamera, because they're not products I can buy, and they explicitly never will be. If I managed to get a demo, I'm sure I'd be NDAed to hell and back. I am excited for Vision Pro because it's something I will actually be allowed to purchase in the future.
> I think Apple is playing it properly here: Announce a product people really want, even if its very far into the future and may possibly not actually come onto the market for years. Use the feedback from the public to fine tune the product as it's developed.
Do note that doing it like that is not what Apple commonly does. Usually work happens in silence and secrecy, then the product is available within like 6 months to purchase (in the US, not necessarily all over the world)
> Potentially vital R/D happening in such a way as to have almost zero chance of actually becoming a product.
My assumption, of this early work, is to scoop up important patents.
Related to important patents, varifocal is almost certainly the future of HMDs.
Having fixed focus, as all HMDs do now, is fatiguing and strange. A really interesting example of this is, in VR, hold something close to your eyes. You'll see that it gets blurry. Now close one eye. You'll see that it's clear. It's not that it's actually blurry, it's that your eyes are refusing to put up with the physical nonsense of a fixed focus 3d world.
I'm confused on your phrasing of "they explicitly never will be."
Those prototypes, of course, aren't going to themselves be shipping. But they are for R&D and to provide example of a nascent technology that one day should end up in a consumer product.
You absolutely can disagree with the approach of showing this too early or not trying hard enough to incorporate this into an (albeit expensive) consumer product today/soon.
But my read is Meta wants this stuff to one day be in consumer headsets. Just not there yet.
There is virtually no market for a $3,500 headset made by Meta. These demos don't seem like things that can't do at all, just things they can't do affordably. What can be done in a $500 consumer device will only increase each year. It is probably smart for Meta to keep slow and steady.
They’re shipping pancake lenses, color pass through, and depth sensors on the Quest Pro and Quest 3. Those were features on the last batch of prototypes a few years ago. Some features from prototypes haven’t shipped yet like their ultra high brightness display or varifocal lenses but I doubt they’ve canned them. I’m glad they’re being so open about this research, along with the release cadence they’re building up for new headsets it inspires a lot of confidence.
> There are two types of people: Those who think VR will change the world—and those who haven’t tried it yet.
As someone who was hooked to VR the moment I put on an helmet, I seriously doubt VR will substantially change the world. The point of VR is to immerse people in a virtual world, but there is nothing beyond that
Also, I've seen ALL these prototypes already. They didn't just do this. It's a slow drip of old research. If they were making these headsets available for purchase at a price normal people could afford I might give a shit.
Is it a coincidence that the light field lens resembles the compound eye of an insect? Could a similar process be happening in the insect’s visual cortex to reproject multiple views? Insects can’t move their eyes like humans, but apparently fruit flies can move their retinas. That seems very similar to the single focal point they demonstrated in the video.
Whatever happened to Reality Labs acquisition of CTRL labs? I was really excited with their prototype wrist keyboard but haven't seen much mention of it.
Went as far as researching developing my own but it such a different field. I hope they didn't throw away that work/knowledge
(ex-Meta person who came in via the CTRL acquisition, and quit back in Dec 2022)
It’s still going! CTRL labs has received a ton of internal resources, and scaled up significantly the 3.5 years I was there. Almost all of that effort is going towards stamping out edge failure cases on the path to making a reliable consumer product.
Consider: What works well for an onstage demo or a store demo you store needs a lot of “last mile” work so that a naive consumer can take it out of a box at home and have it work flawlessly. This is especially true for a new product category. I doubt it will be in the wild until it’s rock solid. There was incredible improvements while I was there, but keep in mind it’s an entire new product category, and so it’s not worth the risk of shipping early and imperfect.
People dunk on Meta for overhyping the metaverse and spending absurd amounts of money on it, but I don't think they get enough credit for the amount of useful R&D that absurd amount of money has enabled. Sure, from a business perspective it's probably silly, but from a tech-person perspective can't we celebrate truly impressive advancements in AI, optics, and hardware design for the VR space?
As far as I know Quest 2 is STILL the best (and most affordable) option* for untethered VR hardware by far (and IMO it's legitimately very good). Quest 3 is coming out soon and I am super excited to see how it compares.
* except maybe Pico 4, but that's hard to get in the US
Only reason I would wear VR is to watch some really good movies with the experience of watching it just like the Apple commercials or being able to « walk » inside the scenes besides the actors. Not even sure I would appreciate the movie as much as the makers wanted me to watch it.
Make me walk on Pandora with VR, maybe I’ll like it. Anything else too close from reality, what’s the point?
> There are two types of people: Those who think VR will change the world—and those who haven’t tried it yet.
> While there are few things as magical as your first VR “a-ha”moment
That first moment for me was Cardboard. I have since used Vive and Oculus and they are cool, but I’m not left wanting to come back for more. Maybe the Cardboard experience conveyed the wrong thing to me, that this is a fun one-off type experience and not something that fits into my life in a bigger way. I’m sure some of the tools have, or could have, real world practical applications, and I would use them if needed, but I just don’t want to strap on a headset and be forced to tune out the rest of the world for longer than necessary.
This display is more about trying to justify the massive spend FB is doing in the metaverse. As cool as this tech is I don’t see the justification for what they have invested.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|2 years ago|reply
And then, Meta has no real interesting in delivering anything other than a product they can ship to millions of people on day 1 at a low price point, while Apple is actively cultivating exclusivity of access as a marketing tactic.
[+] [-] photonerd|2 years ago|reply
Apple has never really done that (at least in the post Jobs return era). They demonstrate what their intention is… then release the device. Zip, except maybe some WWDC stuff in-between.
Which makes sense: Apple is Product Vision & UX focused, Meta (and most other companies) are Product Delivery & User Consumption focused.
Neither is wrong, they’re just aiming at different goals.
[+] [-] baby|2 years ago|reply
I remember reading that Mark Rober was at Apple (nobody knew about that!) and I just feel like that must have sucked massively for someone who loves making youtube videos to work in a place like that.
[+] [-] steveBK123|2 years ago|reply
It's hard to argue that that the one that ships is taking the wrong approach.
[+] [-] grumbel|2 years ago|reply
Ahm, are we forgetting the QuestPro? Meta tried to build their "Apple headset", 5x the price of a Quest2 and loaded with all the R&D features they could find. And it was a colossal flop. The whole thing is getting shutdown little over six months after release.
They forgot to include critical features like a depth sensor, they couldn't figure out what to do with the eye tracking in their software, face tracking wasn't a feature anybody wanted and reduced the battery dramatically when actually used, passthough cameras are a blurry mess, resolution is too low to work as actual desktop replacement, etc.
The whole thing, despite 5x the price, was firmly stuck at just being a slightly better Quest2. Meta spend the last seven years building a portable Oculus Rift, and they succeeded at that, but despite billions in R&D they haven't really managed to advanced VR beyond that point.
[+] [-] __MatrixMan__|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esskay|2 years ago|reply
Apples approach is that they wont release until its ready for use by the average joe. The expectation that you get it and it works out of the box without needing to be too technical is where they thrive.
This isn't to say one approach is better or worse, just different.
[+] [-] joshl32532|2 years ago|reply
Wow, how naive can you be?
Because Meta's forte is ads. The hardware is just the gateway to their ecosystem where they don't have to pay Apple/Google for access to users.
Companies' engineering blogs are just carefully curated marketing pieces with highly distilled technical info. It's still marketing and some people eat it up.
[+] [-] electric_mayhem|2 years ago|reply
Judging by the current relative market caps of facepalm and MySpace, seems like it worked out ok.
[+] [-] troupo|2 years ago|reply
Apple literally ships millions of devices on day one (that is, on the exact day they announce they will ship it).
Edit: with very few notable exceptions like the wireless charger
[+] [-] aalimov_|2 years ago|reply
And you believe that they are doing this out of the goodness of their heart?
[+] [-] hyperthesis|2 years ago|reply
At the same time, they are keeping the door open for mass-market over the long-term.
[+] [-] iLoveOncall|2 years ago|reply
Meta needs as many people using their products to show ads and earn money, that's all there is to it.
[+] [-] simonsarris|2 years ago|reply
A startup begins a project often by announcing that it has almost succeed. Some open source projects and crowdfunded projects with a lot of pomp also take this approach. It is great(?) for fundraising. It is interesting that Meta chooses this since they are not looking for funding, but maybe they are looking to cultivate the same panache/ethos. A way to market to prospective employees, more than end customers.
Apple denies that its even doing something until after it has succeeded. And even then it will announce it on its own terms. The Putin regime also follows this model (eg 2014 annexation of Crimea). It is great for denying competition time to catch up.
[+] [-] catchnear4321|2 years ago|reply
apple can get away with being less polite. what it delivers is enough to motivate a certain level of tolerance.
apple is ecosystem. it is the front runner at the moment, and will be hard to beat.
ffs this is facebook and mark zuckerberg. how does the joke go? their faces are next to the word unlikable in the dictionary?
both meta and zuck are cultivating a rather incredible comeback story. for all the historical hateables, even with layoffs and rto, there are a lot of recent moves that are brilliant.
second place in a martial arts tournament. threads. llama. this.
both meta and zuck are starting to look downright likeable.
this is no accident, and no small feat.
tl;dr you seemed to have missed meta’s marketing tactic, possibly due to anti-apple bias.
[+] [-] seydor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulcole|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cududa|2 years ago|reply
Meta has never showed off demo-able advanced R&D hardware publicly, even when they’ve had it, until now.
This is simply a second degree demo to Wall Street investors. Their analysts will either attend, or read reports from reputable experts.
They’ve sunk $40 Billion into this project with nothing to show. Apple has reportedly spent $20 Billion while underpinning it with healthy growth and profits.
Facebook shipped Quest 2 dev kits to partners that were physically disguised as clothing irons. The narrative you’re spinning is nonsense.
EDIT: You’re either Boz or a lieutenant judging by your comment history.
You only comment on topics related to Facebook competition and say things close to “interesting feedback” and occasionally expose yourself with specific phrases like “Thanks for sharing, it's always interesting to hear these kind of anecdotes!” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36351422
[+] [-] jkaptur|2 years ago|reply
Yep, I'm a skeptic. I tried it, and it was fine! Pretty fun, not that fun. Like going to Disney, I'm perfectly comfortable knowing that it's there, other people love it, and I'll go once every 20 years or so and have a decent time.
Maybe I just haven't had the right experience yet (I went to Epcot, not Star Wars World), but you could argue that about literally anything.
[+] [-] OnlineGladiator|2 years ago|reply
To each their own. I was someone that was excited to try VR for years and then said "that's it?" when I finally got a chance.
[+] [-] erulabs|2 years ago|reply
A bit surprising that these seem so far away from production. I think Apple is playing it properly here: Announce a product people really want, even if its very far into the future and may possibly not actually come onto the market for years. Use the feedback from the public to fine tune the product as it's developed.
Facebook seems now to be something like the company whose former HQ it inhabits: Xerox PARC. Potentially vital R/D happening in such a way as to have almost zero chance of actually becoming a product.
I can't be excited for Butterscotch or Flamera, because they're not products I can buy, and they explicitly never will be. If I managed to get a demo, I'm sure I'd be NDAed to hell and back. I am excited for Vision Pro because it's something I will actually be allowed to purchase in the future.
[+] [-] capableweb|2 years ago|reply
Do note that doing it like that is not what Apple commonly does. Usually work happens in silence and secrecy, then the product is available within like 6 months to purchase (in the US, not necessarily all over the world)
[+] [-] nomel|2 years ago|reply
My assumption, of this early work, is to scoop up important patents.
Related to important patents, varifocal is almost certainly the future of HMDs.
Having fixed focus, as all HMDs do now, is fatiguing and strange. A really interesting example of this is, in VR, hold something close to your eyes. You'll see that it gets blurry. Now close one eye. You'll see that it's clear. It's not that it's actually blurry, it's that your eyes are refusing to put up with the physical nonsense of a fixed focus 3d world.
[+] [-] Kilenaitor|2 years ago|reply
Those prototypes, of course, aren't going to themselves be shipping. But they are for R&D and to provide example of a nascent technology that one day should end up in a consumer product.
You absolutely can disagree with the approach of showing this too early or not trying hard enough to incorporate this into an (albeit expensive) consumer product today/soon.
But my read is Meta wants this stuff to one day be in consumer headsets. Just not there yet.
[+] [-] megaman821|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwuwu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n4te|2 years ago|reply
Anyway I don't think that's what Apple is doing. The are just being expensive, exclusive ass clowns, like usual.
[+] [-] ojbyrne|2 years ago|reply
Also Meta has something Xerox PARC never had, copious amounts of revenue.
[+] [-] w-ll|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shrewduser|2 years ago|reply
did you mean sun microsystems?
[+] [-] throw2291|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] uyhgr|2 years ago|reply
But I am surprised and very impressed with how the researchers choose to use it, and that bug eye shaped lens array is pure scifi fun!
The demo in the video, timestamped below, showing why they used such a design to create a single opening behind the array is amazing in its own right.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O15wUC5D7zE&t=85
[+] [-] poulpy123|2 years ago|reply
As someone who was hooked to VR the moment I put on an helmet, I seriously doubt VR will substantially change the world. The point of VR is to immerse people in a virtual world, but there is nothing beyond that
[+] [-] nickstinemates|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lvl102|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QuantumG|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dougmwne|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intrasight|2 years ago|reply
A good diagram of the evolution of eyes
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/eye-evolution/
Also of interest is this article on using metasurfaces to achieve the same.
I'm sure that optical frequency meta-materials will play important roles in AR/VR.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15460-0
[+] [-] cobertos|2 years ago|reply
Went as far as researching developing my own but it such a different field. I hope they didn't throw away that work/knowledge
[+] [-] escapecharacter|2 years ago|reply
It’s still going! CTRL labs has received a ton of internal resources, and scaled up significantly the 3.5 years I was there. Almost all of that effort is going towards stamping out edge failure cases on the path to making a reliable consumer product.
Consider: What works well for an onstage demo or a store demo you store needs a lot of “last mile” work so that a naive consumer can take it out of a box at home and have it work flawlessly. This is especially true for a new product category. I doubt it will be in the wild until it’s rock solid. There was incredible improvements while I was there, but keep in mind it’s an entire new product category, and so it’s not worth the risk of shipping early and imperfect.
[+] [-] agar|2 years ago|reply
https://mashable.com/article/meta-connect-wrist-controller-h...
[+] [-] andreyk|2 years ago|reply
As far as I know Quest 2 is STILL the best (and most affordable) option* for untethered VR hardware by far (and IMO it's legitimately very good). Quest 3 is coming out soon and I am super excited to see how it compares.
* except maybe Pico 4, but that's hard to get in the US
[+] [-] robinbdru|2 years ago|reply
Make me walk on Pandora with VR, maybe I’ll like it. Anything else too close from reality, what’s the point?
[+] [-] flatline|2 years ago|reply
> While there are few things as magical as your first VR “a-ha”moment
That first moment for me was Cardboard. I have since used Vive and Oculus and they are cool, but I’m not left wanting to come back for more. Maybe the Cardboard experience conveyed the wrong thing to me, that this is a fun one-off type experience and not something that fits into my life in a bigger way. I’m sure some of the tools have, or could have, real world practical applications, and I would use them if needed, but I just don’t want to strap on a headset and be forced to tune out the rest of the world for longer than necessary.
[+] [-] easytiger|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asimpletune|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bullen|2 years ago|reply
The commercial web is dead.
[+] [-] asimpleusecase|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gigatexal|2 years ago|reply