JohnDenver101

Can't help but wonder if the new button animations in iOS18 for the volume buttons indicate that capacitive touch is coming for ALL the buttons this year or next year. 

This is when I wish Apple never cancelled the AirPort. I feel like that would have been the perfect home control device. Have it able to create a full backup of iCloud and Time Machine of all devices on network, auto download updates for all devices for faster installs, and now being able to offload a lot of processes for Apple Intelligence or other intensive tasks. 

It would even make dumb devices like Apple HomePod capable of using Apple Intelligence. 

It was a great device just in its old basic form. I miss that thing. 

kuld klient said:

I've been expecting for Apple to build a robot since 2016 when they showed the robot at the end of their exploding light bulb ad. We also remember Tim Cook's interview with Kara Swisher in 2021 when Cook said the following "If you sort of step back, the car, in a lot of ways, is a robot. An autonomous car is a robot. And so there's lots of things you can do with autonomy. And we'll see what Apple does." 

Exploding lightbulbs Ad: https://youtu.be/hCI26Xcp2lQ?si=zLg5OzweYhUd8y47 
 Scene begins @ 1:17

Just like AI, I think Apple might be playing from the back of the pack on this market too. There are so many companies out there that have decades of work in this field. Just look at how far Boston Dynamics have come. Cold Fusion had a really good video breakdown on companies that are already deep into robotics.  The Race For AI Robots Just Got Real (OpenAI, NVIDIA and more). I would think Apple would need to consider buying several of these companies to catch up. Not unlike what they are doing with AI right now. 

jayweiss said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

Massiveattack87 said:

I bet this will end up like the Apple car. 
Apple just throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks lol.

Apple does not seem to be focused. Ring, the apple car, robots now.. When can we expect real things?

Apple is doing what Apple has always done. They consider new products and figure out if they are viable or not.

There have been many rumored products over the years that never materialized. Steve Jobs talked bout how Apple developed a PDA and scrapped it, there was the rumored audio interface for GarageBand that Think Secret reported and Apple sued them out of existence for covering, I feel like there was a camera in there but that might be wishful thinking on my part.  Phones were something they were considering and was born out of the iPad project. So yeah, Apple fiddles with ideas and pursues the one's they think are viable. Kinda the point of R&D.  

As for "real" things go, Apple post Steve Job's return isn't a company that ventures into entirely new product lines frequently and they just released did the Apple Vision Pro. I don't think we are going to see a big new products in the near future. Refreshes of existing stuff? Sure.

 

There was a camera. It was called the QuickTake camera and was released in 1994. It had a resolution of 640x480. 

Snazzy Labs just made a video about it:  Retro Review: Apple's Digital Camera - QuickTake 200 (Circa 1996)           

I hear a lot of people say "give it 5-10 years". But Apple has never liked to play in the niche product category especially under Tim Apple. The AirPort was awesome and people loved it. It probably cost Apple almost nothing in R&D and manufacturing costs but they canned it anyways. 

Do you think Apple will keep this thing around for 5-10 years as a niche product when it costs them, not just massive amounts of cash in R&D, but also in human resources and manufacturing? 

I would wager if this thing really doesn't take off in the next few years Apple will drop the product. Cook might be willing to hang on a bit longer since this is his first really big product launch since the Apple Watch but I could see the Vision Pro cancelled after 1-2 generations. 

It's interesting how they have changed marketing from Spatial Computing to a media consumption device. It makes sense if you watched the Vision Pro demo that just dropped on YouTube. They spend all of 3 seconds talking about productivity. He literally just opens an email...doesn't even respond. 

I thought for sure they would launch this with a AAA game. Gamers are great advocates for this technology. Getting them to adopt this brings in new developers and bridges the gap for the average consumer. But it is only launching with some movies. 

I really just don't understand the point of this device and the price point only makes things worse. Why would I spend $3500 to watch movies in VR when I can spend $800-1000 for basically the same experience on any other VR headset? Even the Oculus has a Netflix app. 

Meta has been trying for the better part of a decade to convince people VR/AR is the future. They have yet to deliver any viable use case outside of gaming and some niche commercial markets. I was hoping Apple would show us a truly compelling reason to buy their 'Vision'.