badmonk

I think the best thing Apple can do to promote AVP is make sure all AppleTV media (including) sporting events have a 3-D (and preferably Immersive) content offering with the little AVP icon.  Longer term, getting the ability to get influencer content to AVP will be a challenge with the stranglehold of YouTube, Meta and Tick Tock.

After. having experienced the AVP demo, I think the devs will ensure commercial, medical and disability uses but the broader consumer market will need to have consumable media beyond porn.

Time to cue the right-to-repair brigade…

Personally I think the tethered battery controversy is a but overblown as it removes weight from the headset though I find it hard to believe it isn’t swappable on the fly…do any actual owners have confirmation of this?

I showed up at 7am for the opening at the Gardens Mall Apple Store in Palm Beach Gardens Florida and it had a similar vibe, maybe slightly less than a dozen people by 8am, about 1/3 for pickups, the rest for demos like nyself.

The experience of the staff was first rate and I had my demo at 8:30.  The UI was good but the 3D videos and the immersion experiences were trippy.  I felt intensely uncomfortable with Alicia Keys singing 5’ away from me in the studio, like I was going to be found out and slapped with a restraining order.  Likewise the soccer and baseball experiences were great…like being in the stadium.  The natural world experiences likewise.

I think the AVP will be a thing if the 3D and immersion content can be built out rapidly.  I hope AppleTV and Disney are on the ball with this.

It would be great to get influencers/amateurs on board but I am concerned about interference from Alphabet and Meta in this regard (because they will have hardware to compete as well) as they have YouTube and Instagram as obvious portals for content.

In 2007, I was standing in line to get my first iPhone.  It had a 3.5” screen and was primitive in comparison to what a smart phone is now but it looked like the future.  It cost me $799 (over $1000 today as I write this in 2024).  It lacked flexibility and the ability to download apps beyond what it had at the time of purchase (email, Safari, Google Maps, You Tube and iTunes per my memory).

I remember the guy two places in front of me was being interviewed by a reporter who asked him what he was must exited about the phone and he said,

“multitouch.”

That guy was so much smarter than me and had gotten to the crux of the matter.  From my perspective, I was there simply because I was a devotee of Jobs and I thought the device was cool in some vague sense.

 Now a mere 13 plus years later, I see people walking on the street staring at a 5” screen held 2’ in front of their face oblivious to their surroundings.  I see young people on electronic skateboards staring at their phones, I see people driving in their cars staring at their phones, sometimes clipped to their sun visor so as to be ever present.  When in airplanes, trains, airports, train stations everyone is staring at their phones, head bent down at an unnatural and uncomfortable angle.  And those not looking at their phones, are staring at their iPads or computers.  (I have seen “pillows” marked to generation z consumers on Instagram that are really head support devices so they can have their heads supported as they lean forward with a cut-out for easy care-free scrolling.)

I have seen inconsolable children only placated by their parents when handed a phone.  Conversely, I see nothing but empty neighborhoods because children don’t play outside anymore because their leisure time has been taken over by their various personal screens.

I have seen videos of nonhuman primates, scrolling on an iPhone with ease and entranced.  An egomaniacal tech titan is burning through billions of dollars in capital and reputation because of their addiction to their personal 5” screens.  Authoritarians plot and send out messages to their followers using their personal multitouch screens.

Those little 5” screens have taken over our lives.  I can’t get the attention of my wife because she is staring at her phone constantly.  I know people who have substituted an iPad as their personal television.  I know people who don’t even have televisions because they prefer the personal screen of their phone instead.

Humans have no problem substituting the simulacra of a screen for our larger perceived reality.  In 2007, I was standing in line to get my first iPhone.  It had a 3.5” screen and was primitive in comparison to what a smart phone is now but it looked like the future.  It cost me $799 (over $1000 today as I write this in 2024).  It lacked flexibility and the ability to download apps beyond what it had at the time of purchase (email, Safari, Google Maps, You Tube and iTunes per my memory).

As for me, I like to put my iPhone down every now and then to stare at the wonders of the natural world.  Yesterday, I was entranced by watching hawks fly over my home and soaring on the wind coming in from the coast.

As a recently retired ICU physician, pulse oximetry is a useful tool whether it is an Apple Watch, another manufacturer such as a Masimo or a $30 knockoff.  It was critical back when Covid-19 was more lethal for letting people know when it was time to go to the ER for evaluation or tough it out in the home as well as my work in the hospital.  As well as patients with chronic lung conditions, congenital heart disease, etc.

And on a personal note my father used pulse oximetry before he died in hospice (which was the first Apple Watch we bought as a family by the way) to monitor his limits of activity.

It would have been useful during this flight because there is some emerging evidence that hyperoxia is deleterious in cardiac conditions.

There is also a mistaken belief that pulse oximetry is some type of high tech rocket science but the science of sending different wavelengths of light through pulsatile tissue and assessing the difference to calculate oxyhemoglobin percentage is straightforward and been known for decades even before Masimo & their own Tim Sweeney existed.

Masimo has appended the wikipedia page on pulse-oximetry to add some complexity in this regard and I am sure that they have offered some unique refinements because they need to detect reflected light but still…

with millions of Apple Watches in use, it seems like a stretch to discount that their has been no utility to this feature.