JohnDenver101

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JohnDenver101
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  • Apple's next big thing could be a home robot

    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. 
    watto_cobrabyronl
  • Apple's next big thing could be a home robot

    jayweiss 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)           
    watto_cobra
  • So far, Apple is struggling to market Apple Vision Pro

    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'. 
    mark fearingmuthuk_vanalingamAlex1N
  • M3 Ultra Mac Studio rumored to debut in mid-2024 -- without a Mac Pro

    rob53 said:
    hypoluxa said:
    I can't see them (yet) removing the MacPro from their roster. The PCI expansion slots are a niche market for some Pro users who use them, they still have a customer market for it albeit a shrinking one.
    Could this not be addressed with a working external PCI expansion system?
    I don't see why not. I don't see it using a "standard" PCI interface although the Mac Pro uses the (almost) newest PCIe Gen4 x16 and x8 slots. I could see a much faster PCIe interface or something like an extension of the unified memory architecture to an external box allowing the might speed possible to multiple PCIe cards. I know some people want everything in one box but splitting that box into two might be a better choice for those professionals who want to tune their system to their specific needs. An M3 Ultra CPU "box" (Mac Studio) might be enough to serve as a standalone device for semi-professionals (not going to start a rant on who is semi and who is a full professional) as well as the back engine for full professionals needing high-end PCIe boards for specific tasks (animation, video, sound, movies, scientific processes requiring a supercomputer). Everything is getting smaller and working in clusters so starting with a  7.7" x 7.7" x 3.7" tiny box instead of a 8.58" x 17.7" x 20.8 behemoth weighing 37.2 lbs without any PCIe cards installed makes a huge difference in a computer/server room. I would like to see Apple offer clustering software along with the addition of one of the fastest computer interfaces ( PCIe6 x16 968-Gbps, NVLink 2.0 1.2Tbps, or even a very expensive Infinity Fabric 4.096 Tbps) would provide an amazingly fast Mac cluster capable of competing with just about any specialized, much more expensive mainframe level cluster system. Something in between would be much nicer than keeping the Mac Pro form factor.
    Not supporting a GPU or RAM expansion via PCI felt like a slap to animators and other professionals who require that. If you don't support those things what's the point of spending $3K more for a tower to plug your video card into? Just buy the Studio and use Thunderbolt. If Apple doesn't bring more PCI support in future chips there is literally no reason for the MacPro, not to say there is one now. 
    d_2williamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Sizing up Tim Cook's vision for an immersive wearable

    one9deuce said:
    Two really big (and many smaller) factors differentiate what Apple is doing vs. everyone else. The first is interacting with the internet with just your eyes and a pinch (they way Apple is implementing it is so amazing) the eye tracking is apparently something that other companies have done before, but until the Apple Vision keynote I had *never* even heard of that before. Which means that 99% of the population hasn’t. Which leads me to the next big factor, Apple has an install base of over a billion people! This is exactly that moment when a company is perfectly suited and situated to bring this to the mainstream. And bring it they will. 

    Compare the original iPhone to an iPhone 15 Pro, it’s a huge, huge difference. Compare the original Apple Watch to the Series 9 Apple Watch, a tremendous improvement. Apple Vision will be an even bigger change because they already know what they want to do and they probably know exactly how they’re going to do it: a pair of glasses that look like a fashionable pair of Oakley’s that nobody will think twice about seeing people wear them. Nobody thinks twice about AirPods now and they’re everywhere, and I’d say that’s a stranger look than some glasses. 

    Seriously, go buy some Apple stock, this is going to change the world. A company like Apple doesn’t spend 10’s of billions a year on R&D unless they think they’ve got something special to offer the world.  


    They’ve got something special to offer the world. 
    Eye tracking and hand interaction is great but is that a feature that is going to draw millions in that a joystick won't? It's a better interface but like I said before,  it's not a ground breaking feature that the average person will be like "I have to have that!" You need to give people a real reason to use it. No company, including Apple has done it yet. Hardware won't be the driving force to use this device. It will be software and Apple didn't show anything on that front. Meta spent billions creating a universe and no one cares.  

    Your second argument is my favorite one I hear all the time. "Wait till this is like a pair of glasses!" The difficulty of shrinking the dozens of cameras, sensors and battery to something the size of a pair of glasses could easily take well over a decade to come. Hell Apple still can't create the purported "Slab of Glass" iPhone yet without ports or notches. If you are telling me the masses with only use this once it's a pair of glasses, they will be waiting a LONG time.

    Two other major problems with this:

    1) If you do make it a pair of glasses you will lose the immersive VR capabilities (the best feature in my opinion) unless everyone is wearing swimming goggles.
    2) You still have to put the glasses on. If you don't wear glasses all day, this is a problem. The watch and phone are great bc they are always with you. People are inherently lazy. If my glasses are in the other room, I'm not going to get them when I can just check my phone in my pocket or the watch on my wrist.  

    Lastly, a point I always repeat with the Vision Pro is that thing uses 14 IR LEDs shooting IR light into your eyes. There are multiple studies showing even minutes of close exposure to IR light can damage the eye and potentially cause diseases like cataracts. I even get the feeling Apple knows this. In the keynote, when they talked about the sensors they were very careful to say it uses 14 LEDs of "invisible light" to track your eye. I would be extremely hesitant to use this device until they can absolutely certify this is safe for your eyes. 

    We will see, like I said before, still a lot of unknowns. 
    muthuk_vanalingam