Pema

Goodness gracious me! That's a $20 Billion dollar infusion from Google to Apple that just flew out the window. Not to mention the fact that going forward Google will no longer have default access to 2.5 Billion Apple devices. If Google is banking on it's Gemini efforts to save their bacon then they may as well start sleeping in homeless shelters and getting handouts. 

Losing access to 2.5 Billion Apple devices is HUGE. Make no mistake. It literally means that Microsoft can now go ahead and cut a $20 Billion deal with Apple to plug Bing or Apple will just need to beef up Safari and build out a data centre to provide comprehensive search results. The good news is with Apple Intelligence they may be able to shortcut the years-long process of aggregating hangers full of data and provide the search results via Generative AI. Forget Predictive. That's like trying to predict the weather. 

Finally we are getting somewhere. Apple is at last realising that as consumer product it is doomed. But with a pro application it makes perfect sense. There is a huge potential in every segment of medicine, industry, manufacturing, education, government, military, aviation etc. etc. where the Vision Pro price wise wouldn't faze anyone and the application will bring huge productivity. 
The XR consumer segment is a whole different beast. Someone/or some team at Apple positioned this device totally and completely wrong. Apple is so used to selling to consumers that that is where it was pitched. But a year later it is just collecting bad press and dust. 
Hopefully in 2025/2026 we will see a resurgence of the XR set matched to a consumer application and at a consumer price point. 

This is just more sore loser talk. Isn't all user data compromised in Generative AI? I mean, where are the hangers full of data coming from? User data - like you and me. 

mikethemartian said:

I have never seen anyone wearing one.

For the Vision Pro to go mainstream Apple will need; 

1. Content
2. Comfortable Size 
3. Price
4. Use case

Not necessarily in that order. Everyone understands phones, computers, earbuds, tablets, TVs, cameras, watches.

Like mikethemartian said, he has never seen anyone wear it. I would addd even Not even in an Apple store. 

Personally I don't see this as a viable consumer product. 

I certainly can see it as a very useful product in hospitals, labs, industry etc. etc. 

There is no question that Apple created the ultimate XR that if anyone would want one that's the one they would get. But even at a price of a base phone there s just no consumer market for this. Not even Meta despite years of plugging Quest at a couple hundred dollars could turn this into a viable mainstream product. 

Not everything that tech creates has a market. The tech graveyard is littered with products that never made it. Just look at Google. Two hundred plus flops and counting. 

The next aimless pursuit is smart glasses running in conjunction with the phone. Forget it.

What we need is a Steve Jobs to dream up something new that adds value and functionality and not just a lateral device that sits on top of one's face and isolates us from the world around us. 

The buzz now is AI. Let's see how this pans out. 

 

9secondkox2 said:

By now, AI is a known quantity. Reverse engineering and IP theft are not new either. This is just the tip of the proverbial "iceberg" as relates to an incoming swarm of products / services like this. yawn. China is not new to knockoffs, software included. AI is no different. Easy to develop something rapidly when you're copying the work of pioneers who put much of their lives into the work. Should software controlled by a hostile nation be on American's devices? It's an interesting question. But outside of government officials, members of the military, or those with security credentials, probably not too big a concern. But it's worth investigating. It's not like we didn't just have the chinese surveilance devices surveying our nation from the air last year. The less information an adversarial nation has on another nations citizens, the better. It may not be a WMD or whatever, but it's definitely not something to be dismissed.

I am not so sure about this. 

Recall how back in the late 60s and early 70s we used to mock the Japanese, especially their cars. And then gradually they upended the industry and forced us to up our game, in cars, electronics and cameras.

I would not suggest that the Chinese are ripping anyone off, it is just that they are doing it the smart way and we are doing it the hard and unwieldily way. 

Much as Mr Trump wants to make America great again and resurrect the American Empire, going forward it is going to be the Chinese Empire. 

You only need to read books like 'The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbons)' or Barbarians at the Gate and realise what's happening with the US. We have become fat and lazy; too much booze and too many drugs; let our guard down at our borders which is exactly what happened with the almighty Romans. 

The Chinese have captured the EV market; they have sown up the manufacturing of just about everything and now they are showing us how AI is done. Marc Andreessen of Mosaic fame calls this the 'Sputnik' moment. When the Russians orbited the earth before we even knew how to build rockets. 

It forced us (remember JFK's famous speech) to wake up, commit billions of dollars, create NASA and land on the moon in 1969. 

Perhaps Trump and this event will force us to wake up and take the reins and rise up out of the ashes or we will continue to sink into oblivion: a nation of lazy drug users who can't get their game together. Our problem is not that we have too many undocumented migrants. Even if we round up and evict every single one of them it won't restore our boldness, vision and greatness. 

That's what is happening here. Blaming the Chinese for stealing our IP is just nonsense and short viewed.