I'm honestly kind of boggled by the HN comments so far, all seem to be various forms "I can't see how wearable displays can offer any value unless they're cheap". To me the use case is obvious: getting rid of the fucking screen. There is no inherent law of physics reason I can't have a full size desktop 10k 40" or whatever max is "display" for every single system I interact with, anywhere. The current paradigm of lots of different screens for different computers (desktop/notebook/tablet/phone/watch/appliances) is because nobody has yet been able to sufficiently directly project photons into retina via something good enough and wearable. Products like the RETISSA II demonstrate direct retinal projection working but without enough resolution, too clunky, etc. But the fundamentals work. The killer app IMO for a wearable display is replacing every other display. I can sit down at my desk or anywhere else and have whatever screen size/config I want, the only difference being how much local compute I have available and at what latency. No more need for "headless servers", just have the right display key pairs and you can pull up a screen/console just from what you're wearing. Same with anything from network switches to printers, can have augmented local display tech using a full size screen vs some tiny little LED thing at best. On a plane or a train and want to watch a movie, or pull up SSH sessions or whatever else? Full screen, and in total privacy. NV/FLIR, or digital [LMH]VPOs could all just feed into my worn display too. Which would be perfectly crisp even for those of us with bad eyes.
And on and on and on. It's so obvious. All the challenges involved are engineering/polish/politics (in terms of agreeing on some level of industry standards at least for a minimal level of universal interaction). Which doesn't mean it couldn't be mucked up but the promise is clear. I've spent many many thousands of dollars on displays of all sorts. When one wearable one can replace them all I'd cheerfully pay $5k let alone $3k. It'll also open up entire new realms of form factors for computers.
Apple may or may not manage it, and certainly probably not the first go around, but it's pretty clear why they'd want to be getting going on real experience with it even if it's mostly for devs and such to start. It's the definition of a looming disruption, a huge amount of their current visual product design is about "very nice screens, with stuff on them". Something that eventually obsoletes the "screens" bit would be one obvious way someone else could pull the rug out from under most of Apple's current offerings, and conversely is a big new opportunity for them too long term. It might take them 5-10 years, but if they think now is the time to get iterating I don't see why they shouldn't get going even if it's a touch aggressive.
Everyone can see the value of a Holodeck, or a magical lightweight high-resolution display that barely weighs on your head, doesn't cause eye-strain and doesn't mess up your hair.
But that hasn't yet been technically achieved.
What the comments are saying is: "I can't see how current state-of-the-art wearable displays can offer any value, given their current limitations"
And I agree. With none of the headsets I've tried (Rift, Rift-S, Valve Index, HoloLens, HoloLens 2), I could imagine working 8 hours per day. They're heavy, scratchy and are annoying to put-on & take off. The Nreal Airs, mentioned by a sibling comment, have a promising form-factor, but only feature a 1080p display.
At our current technological advancement, I doubt that Apple will overcome these limitations next week.
If there was some massive market for this, it would already exist.
As-is, desktop streaming apps do exist for VR. This emerging paradigm you're describing is yours for the taking, if you want it.
Screens are simply a better paradigm though. I say this as someone with a wireless OLED headset less than 20 feet away from me - I choose to instead respond and browse the internet and program and watch TV on my disappointing, $250 VA panel. There is never a time where I go "I'd rather experience this 2D, traditional content in VR now" even if the headset is charged and ready to go. Casting the content to my TV is much more comfortable, lets me share it with others, lets me eat my popcorn unintruded and works much better for binging sessions where you don't want "headset burns" on your face.
> On a plane or a train and want to watch a movie, or pull up SSH sessions or whatever else?
Yes, because this is just so difficult on my phone and laptop. If I want to watch a movie or pull up SSH sessions while I'm on a train, I would much rather do so on an interface that is not stuck to my face.
Write it on my tombstone, if it makes you happy. This headset is dead-on-arrival the moment their "Starting at" figure is revealed to be over $1,000. If that sounds like a longshot to you, then the WWDC response is going to make me look like William Tell.
I agree this is the main intended use case, but I’m not sure it’s compelling enough to offset all the downsides:
* Unless Apple has figured out true mixed reality (i.e. transparent lenses with full field-of-vision overlaid video), opaque AR goggles are a non-starter for most people. Seeing your surroundings only through a camera and screen is unacceptable. Not to mention the fact that people around you can’t see your face either.
* Unless other people have these glasses, they can’t see your screen either. Even if these glasses have no shortcomings whatsoever, I can’t imagine a future where everyone in the room needs compatible glasses to look at the same screen.
* Few people actually need enormous amounts of screen real estate, beyond what’s practical to pack in a laptop. The use cases you’ve mentioned (watching movies on the go, logging into device consoles) are fairly niche IMO. There would have to be some compelling new UI paradigm (e.g. truly 3D displays) that’s only possible at massive virtual display scale.
> Seeing your surroundings only through a camera and screen is unacceptable.
Without qualification this statement is strange. I don't care if I'm seeing through a camera and screen or through a transparant piece of plastic. What I care about is image quality, distortion, FOV, latency etc.
So the question is surely a more nuanced one about the relative importance of each of these factors?
> Not to mention the fact that people around you can’t see your face either.
When I'm working I'm not sure this is a huge deal.
> Unless other people have these glasses, they can’t see your screen either. Even if these glasses have no shortcomings whatsoever, I can’t imagine a future where everyone in the room needs compatible glasses to look at the same screen.
Ah. I get it - you're assuming there's other people in the same room as you! Why would you make that assumption for this device? I rarely work with anyone in the room, and when I do, they tend to be working on their own stuff. My collaborations are 90% remote (and for the 10% I can take the headset off)
>I don't care if I'm seeing through a camera and screen or through a transparant piece of plastic. What I care about is image quality, distortion, FOV, latency etc.
There is currently no camera/display tech that is remotely close to delivering dynamic range, latency, refresh rate, and resolution anywhere close to what our eyes can perceive.
>>Not to mention the fact that people around you can’t see your face either.
>When I'm working I'm not sure this is a huge deal.
It is certainly a big deal for many people to be able to maintain eye contact with people they're speaking with in person.
>Ah. I get it - you're assuming there's other people in the same room as you! Why would you make that assumption for this device?
I think you are the one making several constraining assumptions here:
1. this device is just for work
2. most people work physically alone
3. in the rare instances that people work together, they almost never look at each others' screens
Re: 1, OP's vision is that AR goggles may ultimately supersede displays entirely, which would make it difficult to do things that most people commonly do today, like show their friends things on their phone.
Re: 2, this is also not true; as of February 2023, it's estimated that 30% of all office work occurred remotely [0].
Re: 3, this is also not true, especially outside of the tech industry, where people collaborate in-person on documents/spreadsheets/presentations all the time.
I see a whole host of impractical impediments: knowing Apple, only Apple glasses will be able to have a shared reality experience, so all the people in the room with non-Apple glasses will be left out. There will also be version incompatibilities as the tech evolves, leading to a whole host of awkward scenarios: "sorry friends, I can't show you this funny video, I have the iGlass 5 but you guys only have the iGlass 3, and you guys have Samsung Galaxy Glass." Furthermore, since these glasses will have to be networked, you'd likely need a separate pair for work and personal life, which creates a host of incompatibilities ("sorry coworker, I can't show you my photos from the weekend, since I took them with my personal glasses and you only have your work pair on you.")
> OP's vision is that AR goggles may ultimately supersede displays entirely, which would make it difficult to do things that most people commonly do today, like show their friends things on their phone.
This is the context I missed. I wasn't thinking "all day" usage - but then I don't see that being especially feasible even for transparent AR for quite a while (for different reasons).
Honestly, I think you're just pulling some of these user preferences out of nowhere. Or at least you're greatly underestimating what is acceptable. Its not like people don't use sunglasses and ski-goggles. Eye contact is nice but proven to not be necessary in many many cases.
The reason a Quest Pro is a pain is the weight and passthrough quality. You get used to not seeing someone's eyes fairly quickly.
>3. in the rare instances that people work together, they almost never look at each others' screens
This is a huge one but I think its a workable problem. Hopefully Apple lets you 'cast' your screen to others for a shared experience. It makes a huge difference.
>Unless Apple has figured out true mixed reality (i.e. transparent lenses with full field-of-vision overlaid video)
This sounds like a very early adopter/developer version 1. The tech for what you describe exists, but this particular version isn't going to be it. Which I'm basing on Apple themselves, leaks says they're thinking in terms of hundreds of thousands of units in a year for this, for contrast they sold something like 220 million iPhones just last year. The question is whether they can achieve an MVP and get iterating.
>Unless other people have these glasses, they can’t see your screen either. Even if these glasses have no shortcomings whatsoever, I can’t imagine a future where everyone in the room needs compatible glasses to look at the same screen.
I can, very, very easily. But in the long interim between now and then, I can imagine remaining legacy screens which people already have for that. Because we already have them. It's not a zero-sum game, having wearable displays too doesn't somehow make existing screens shut off.
>Few people actually need enormous amounts of screen real estate
Utterly ludicrous. The only reason people use small screens is portability, size (not everyone physically has room for a large display), and cost. If there were two 12" notebooks, one of which had a conventional matching screen like now and the other at the push of a button could pop out a 30" magic solid hologram display (resizable to whatever one wanted) at zero extra mass or stored size cost for the same price, there are zero people who'd pick the former. Everything everyone does with computers and gaming and movie watching and so on benefits from full resolution arbitrary size windows. It's just that right now there is no way to separate that from the physical size of the display hardware itself.
>watching movies/playing games/reading books/doing work is niche, and wanting to do it privately is niche
I am not aware of this technology; can you point me to it?
>>Unless other people have these glasses, they can’t see your screen either. Even if these glasses have no shortcomings whatsoever, I can’t imagine a future where everyone in the room needs compatible glasses to look at the same screen.
>I can, very, very easily.
Currently, if your own device doesn't work, it just means you can't access your own content. With connected AR devices, it would mean that you also can't access anyone else's shared reality. Here are some common ways I foresee AR devices not being easily interoperable:
* Knowing Apple, only Apple glasses will be compatible with each other, so all the people in the room with non-Apple glasses (or glasses that are too old) will be left out: "sorry friends, I can't show you this funny video, I have the iGlass 5 but you guys only have the iGlass 3, and you guys have Samsung Galaxy Glass."
* Battery life on these had better be phenomenal, since you're cut off from a large portion of reality if it dies.
* These glasses will have to be networked, with close to zero latency, which is always tricky business—even mature technologies like wifi are far from perfectly reliable today.
>But in the long interim between now and then, I can imagine remaining legacy screens which people already have for that. Because we already have them. It's not a zero-sum game, having wearable displays too doesn't somehow make existing screens shut off.
I totally agree. This is the future I think is most likely — some sort of clever hybrid between physical screens and AR screen extensions.
>>Few people actually need enormous amounts of screen real estate
>Utterly ludicrous.
You are right. I should have said, “given the tradeoffs of AR glasses, few people need that real estate.”
>The only reason people use small screens is portability, size (not everyone physically has room for a large display), and cost. If there were two 12" notebooks, one of which had a conventional matching screen like now and the other at the push of a button could pop out a 30" magic solid hologram display (resizable to whatever one wanted) at zero extra mass or stored size cost for the same price, there are zero people who'd pick the former.
I totally agree with this. If this technology were a magic hologram (i.e. zero tradeoffs), it would be totally game-changing.
> watching movies/playing games/reading books/doing work is niche, and wanting to do it privately is niche
You don't need a giant screen with tons of tradeoffs to read most books or do most work. Gaming and movies would benefit, but most people do not spend the majority of their time on a computer gaming or watching cinematic movies.
I share that vision but I don’t see the current Apple doing this.
With their performance advantage they could easily work towards something like Samsung Dex with a compute core that you plug into different terminals, or macOS on the iPad.
But they choose not to, most likely trying not to cannibalize different device categories.
I would love to be wrong but I don’t see this happening for many years until some Chinese brand offers cheap alternative glasses and everyone runs around with a battery powered Mac mini.
Besides that we also obviously don’t know how long until the battery and display tech is good enough to compete with screens
I don't have a crystal ball either. But there is no one in tech at this point who hasn't read The Innovator's Dilemma. And Apple themselves have as good a recent history of disrupting themselves as well as others and shifting tacks, repeatedly, as any other megacorp. They are clearly awake to it. Doesn't mean they can execute, but I don't agree there is any sign of them "trying not to cannibalize" vs just not thinking the timing is there yet.
Granted the question of timing is of course always one of the huge challenges too, someone can have 100% the right idea, product segment focus, etc, but be too early (or too late) and fail. But again, Apple has to have as much insight into all of this as anyone, they've built deep, deep manufacturer relationships. As with some of their previous products, the right time to get going is probably "a bit early, but not too much". Ie, good enough to satisfy a few hundred thousand people, not just thousands/tens of thousands, but early enough that everyone else thinks it's not ready yet. Then there is enough qualities/volume for real feedback and getting the iteration ball rolling, but not so much that it means making major changes isn't doable yet. If I think back to Mac OS X (I still vividly remember both the Public Beta and 10.0), the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, or even a lot of Mac models (Macbook Air v1 definitely had a host of "this needs more hardware" aspects), that seems to be around the point they always aim for.
Again no special insight on if they've gotten that moment right here but it certainly doesn't feel like it couldn't be given where things are at. And my confusion is people who apparently can't see any value at all, regardless of improvements. It's one thing to say "I think they're 3 years too early for MVP", it's another to say "what's the point of wearable displays ever".
It’s hilarious, I’ve got a pair of nreal airs and I use them all the time, the ergonomics and comfort alone are so much better than a standard monitor.
Yes exactly. They've been foreshadowing this with developers for a while with ARKit. It will take several iterations, and likely as yet non existent new technology to make this a true mass market product. But it's not like it would make sense for them to spin on prototypes for a decade, and some point they have to ship and take it from there.
Nowhere in this comment do you mention Apple Music, Apple TV+ or the App Store -- these are the areas Apple is trying to drive traffic to with their hardware. I don't expect them to even bother to give lip service to the kinds of use cases you're describing.
And on and on and on. It's so obvious. All the challenges involved are engineering/polish/politics (in terms of agreeing on some level of industry standards at least for a minimal level of universal interaction). Which doesn't mean it couldn't be mucked up but the promise is clear. I've spent many many thousands of dollars on displays of all sorts. When one wearable one can replace them all I'd cheerfully pay $5k let alone $3k. It'll also open up entire new realms of form factors for computers.
Apple may or may not manage it, and certainly probably not the first go around, but it's pretty clear why they'd want to be getting going on real experience with it even if it's mostly for devs and such to start. It's the definition of a looming disruption, a huge amount of their current visual product design is about "very nice screens, with stuff on them". Something that eventually obsoletes the "screens" bit would be one obvious way someone else could pull the rug out from under most of Apple's current offerings, and conversely is a big new opportunity for them too long term. It might take them 5-10 years, but if they think now is the time to get iterating I don't see why they shouldn't get going even if it's a touch aggressive.