Marvin

Rogue01 said:

applebynature said:

Yup, we've known about the required facial scanning for proper fit since June.
I'm curious how big of a fiasco it's going to be to go into an Apple Store to demo a unit. They should do it by appointment with a required face scan before the appointment so everything is ready for you to try out. If they're just allowing everyone to come in to wait around in the store for one of the scarce demo units to be available, then having to go through a fitting and set up process along with being trained how to use it, man that will be a disaster with the time involved and so many waiting around to try it. But on the other hand, I can see people going to the store to try it out and being told, oh you have to make an appointment, the next one is in 3 weeks, and that not going over too well with customers either, so who knows.

you have to wonder why Apple even made this product when consumers are not really into that product category at all.

Once they were able to make the display so you couldn't see the pixels and it felt like an exact blend of real and digital content, the experience of feeling like stepping into a movie would have been enough to convince them to take it to market.

Some experiences will leave people stunned like having a virtual human in front of them. Not a CGI-looking human but a real-time stereo projection of a person.



In this video 0:23, someone could be watching a nature documentary and see a whale breaching from the floor of their living room:



People who previewed movies on it scaled up to a billboard size said they wouldn't want to watch movies any other way.

Being able to lay back on a bed or lounger and have a giant Mac/iOS screen floating will feel more comfortable than holding an iPad.

At the right price, millions of people will want these experiences.

danox said:

A base M2 SOC supports up to 24 gigs of ram if Apple wants it to, also how much ram does the R1 co-processing chip have?

R1 is for processing camera feeds. If it uses 4K HDR framebuffers, 3840 x 2160 x 5-bytes x 6 visual cameras = 250MB + 4x IR cameras for eye-tracking + 2 depth cameras. I wouldn't expect it to use more than around 2GB of memory but likely to be high bandwidth as it needs to process those frames at 90FPS+. They might store current frame and previous frame plus composite of both = 1GB then mono feeds for depth and IR (< 512MB).

StrangeDays said:

So lame. Penalizing your paying customers is not the way to go. Even HBO Max got that right…

It's probably not sustainable to go straight to streaming, that's the lowest revenue option.

Napoleon came in 24th worldwide at $213m, a bit higher than Killer's of the Flower Moon:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/2023/

It says here it needs another $300m to break even but that's napkin math based on traditional movie production and marketing:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/napoleon-movie-box-office-passes-epic-milestone-but-its-still-300-million-short/ar-AA1m8H4y

If Apple has 30m paid subs on Apple TV+, they generate 30m x $120 = $3.6b revenue, which has to cover all their productions for the year and then profit. It was reported Apple made 50 TV productions and movies in 2023 so $72m per production to break even. Some were probably lower cost than this so the bigger budget movies could be attributed $100-150m.

The Napoleon rental is priced at $20. If they can sell just 5m rentals, they make an extra $100m.

I think this is the way the industry will go: cinema ($10 per person), rental ($10-20 per rental), streaming ($10 per month of content).

$213m cinema + $100m rentals + $100m streaming subs is probably break even or mildly profitable once costs and revenue sharing are factored in.

maury markowitz 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 think so, there are devices like the Asus Rog Ally handheld PC that has a proprietary PCIe connector to plug in a 4090 GPU:

https://rog.asus.com/us/external-graphic-docks/rog-xg-mobile-2023-model/

Apple can easily add an external PCIe connector to the Mac Studio and let 3rd parties like Sonnet build chassis options around it. They already make these but are limited to Thunderbolt bandwidth:

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmac-studio/overview.html

A single PCIe x16 gen6 connector would be plenty of bandwidth (~1Tbit/s).

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/pcie-70-to-reach-512-gbs-arrive-in-2025

It needs to take into account latency, heat, reliability too though. Some of the uses cases are for high-end audio production. If a 3rd party solution doesn't measure up or the 3rd party companies eventually closed up, the studios would have to switch platform.

Every Mac Pro upgrade feels like they are testing the water to see if there's still demand for it just to make sure. Every year the sales will keep drying up, it must be in the low 10k units per year by now. There has to be a breaking point eventually where they pull the plug.

mikethemartian said:

gatorguy said:

What's the objection to sitting down at the table with Masimo and accepting their offer for a negotiation? Even the richest and most powerful of all companies should recognize when it's time to cut their losses, the lesson taken. 

My guess is spite.

The Masimo CEO says Apple hired a lot of their top employees rather than partner with them. They paid more than double their salaries along with large stock options and some of the employees just moved to a nearby building:



It makes sense for Apple to do things in-house because they can scale better without relying on 3rd party components.

He also says Apple could have avoided the ban by making the watches/sensors in the US so that's an option Apple could use.

I wonder how companies like Fitbit are getting around it as they have blood oxygen sensors too.

The Masimo CEO says he's open to negotiating with them. I expect Apple will appeal first.

If blood oxygen sensing is important enough to have on the Apple Watch, they might be able to negotiate licensing but it doesn't seem like it's all that useful for most people. It's not something that commonly goes wrong but is probably good for mountain climbers to have:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a3890/4298495/
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/tools/pulse-oximeter-everest-safety-gear/

If Fitbit can get away with having blood oxygen sensors, Apple can too.