baka-dubbs

Not in any large percentages.  For the truly high end enthusiast, they are not going to want to stream content at lower bitrates.  They may be 4k screens per eye, but the area the TV will  be taking up won't be 4K.  For audiophiles, they aren't going to get the base/volume clarity out of the built in speakers.  No sitting with family/friends/significant others.  I am not going to invite friends over to watch a game and expect them all to have AVP's so we can watch on different big virtual screens...

I am very excited for its potential, but I really think this is a supplemental device in its current state.  I use VR headsets, you will hit a limit on how long you can comfortably wear this headset, even as light as it is.  It is going to squeeze your head to stay in place, you would not want to work all day wearing this headset.  Based on the hands on I am reading, this is a device that blows away prior AR/VR experiences, but it still has some of the same shortfalls of other headsets.  

I have been a subscriber since Youtube TV started at $35 and it was an amazing value proposition, with my use case being for live sports.  As they continue to add more channels I don't care about and increase prices, I am looking seriously at alternatives.  Its getting to the point that compared to a cable bundle its no longer saving me money, it actually costs more than traditional cable tv/internet.  They seriously need to bring different service tiers as its no longer worth the price they are charging.

lkrupp said:

How often does it have to be repeated that ‘cherrypicking' and ‘crowing’ is for spec monkeys and benchmark junkies that populate tech blogs. But interesting that AMD chose Apple Silicon instead of Intel to attempt to smear, a la Samsung. At least we know Apple Silicon has everyone’s attention now, don’t we.

They compared themselves to both Intel and Apple, specifically the 1280P from Intel and both the M1 Pro in Cinebench and the M2 for the AI engine performance.  And yeah, I think its a sign of respect for Apple Silicon that they are being compared, Apple has big head start in leveraging AI in desktop hardware.

Every company cherry picks at their presentations to highlight their performance advantages.   Apple, Intel, Qualcomm and AMD all do this.  The article mentions(strangely) that they don't compare themselves to the M1 Pro Max or the M1 Ultra.  This is because the 7040 is not in the same pricing category(and the Ultra is a desktop chip...).  The 7040 is not their high end chip, its a thin and light chip.  They have a separate Dragon Range chip for high performance laptops that is a 16 core Zen 4 chip that runs at a much higher TDP.  And obviously the M1 Ultra should more rightfully be compared the desktop 7950x or a Threadripper chip, especially when factoring in costs.

MicroLED isn't some magic technology.  Its main advantages have always been higher brightness and no(far less) risk of degradation over time.  On the flip side, OLED is a pretty mature technology.  MicroLED offered more accurate colors originally, due to WOLED require a white pixel to boost the brightness, however Samsung's QD OLED no longer requires that, and is offered currently in a TV that has 2k nits of brightness.  So the brightness advantage is minimized, and the fact that QD OLED uses only a blue backlight with quantum dots to transform them into RGB, it supposedly reduces burn in risk(take that with a grain of salt, we will see over time).  

I think Apple will use whatever the best technology they can get at a high volume at a specified price level.  MicroLED continues to improve, but at least with Samsung's version is still power hungry and produces a lot of heat, both of which are not good for a portable device.  And OLED continues to improve each year.

The most interesting thing from the presentation isn't even mentioned here, its that the have integrated a Xilinix FPGA as part of their AI engine.  Depending on how addressable that FPGA is, it could create some interesing(if niche) capabilities.