Agree, and would add that “apps” is likely the wrong mindset: This thing is going to be all about experiences. Yoga on the beach. Standing on the pitch during Ted Lasso. Watching the Apollo moon landing from the surface of Tranquility Base.
Either they have the immersion and UI model that makes this kind of content viscerally “wow”, or they don’t have a product. I’m guessing they have a product.
These "experiences" are visceral but also very short lived and weirdly frustrating for many (most ?) people.
I look at it the same we look at paintings. Some pieces are truely mindblowing, speak to your soul and you could look at them everyday for next decades without getting bored...or not. I think for most people even the most impacting piece becomes a wallpaper pattern after the fifth time they stared at it for 5 min. They might revisit it once in a while, at most.
For a headset, that mostly means it's played with for 30 min the first time and stays in a closet for the rest of its life. You forget about it and don't get a chance to get revisited.
So yes, experiences could be wonderful, but it also needs apps that bring you back to the device on a regular basis to help the ecosystem stay alive.
(the other weird part: the more realistic and visceral the experience is, the more you get greedy and ask for more. Except there's nothing beyond. You'll be looking at that moon landing, wishing to move forward to look closer, except it will be clunky if even possible. And you're reminded that yes, it's "just" virtual, and technology and content is not ready yet)
I had that visceral “wow” while reading your post. I’m not saying that’s what they’ll do. But that _is_ one way of leveraging the content/IP from TV+ and could serve as an impressive demonstration which is fun to work on.
I am guessing they don't, if we use your metrics. I do get that discussing here are mostly US fanboys, so facts are hard to actually discuss rationally, but Apple made flops in the past, and underwhelming hardware and software they initially presented as second coming of Jesus.
VR is hard, sorry hard even for companies that had decade headstart and similar budgets and talents available to Apple.
It may actually help them if people have more realistic expectations than presented here, since its not possible it will be a perfect product from gen 1, day 1. Not even Apple ever achieved any of that on any sophisticated product. Since there are so many sub-categories in VR to compete in (home cinema, overall immersion, raw resolution, couch/room experience, controllers, comfort, virtual huge desktop, sound quality and so on and on) people should be realistic. And also expect to wait few years to have 3rd party software fully utilizing HW.
Price point should not drive expectations, Apple often gives upmark on its products compared to competition. We shall see soon.
Honestly the tech has stagnated for the last few years, with VR headsets actually getting crappier, (Meta Quest Pro is slightly better than 1080p?) I hope Apple lights a fire under them, it's 2023 the technology could be a LOT better. VR is one of those things where it either works perfectly or it's a failure, you need super high refresh rates, high resolution, and software to get a certain level of immersion that tricks your brain into believing it's real.
The Pro is sort of an aberration. Pixels per degree are actually higher than the Quest 2, but the panel resolution itself is slightly less (and the MiniLED tech is far superior to the regular LCD panel). The big upgrade was with the pancake optics, which are actually quite a leap forward.
Meta should have put the product on ice until Qualcomm had XR2 Gen 2 SoCs available. They couldn’t bump the panel resolution because of the SoC. Hell, even the extremely overengineered Touch Pro controllers only exist as an artifact of the XR2 not supporting enough cameras to do face/eye tracking while still having cameras available for SLAM tracking.
Have you ever been to a live action theater and dinner thing? Like Tony and Tina’s wedding and the lion king - it’s corny as hell and meant to be consumed in small doses.
Either they have the immersion and UI model that makes this kind of content viscerally “wow”, or they don’t have a product. I’m guessing they have a product.