lordjohnwhorfin

Why would Apple want to ship anything remotely resembling the Oculus experience? It’s an unmitigated disaster!

This almost sounds reasonable except it’s total BS. First, the fees are a percentage off the sales. If you sell a $3 app, $1 goes to Apple and $2 goes to you. It may sound steep until you realize the size of the market you’re gaining access to, and also how much pre-digital distribution markets were costing to software developers. If you make a software package that’s for sale physically at MicroCenter, Fry’s, Best Buy... and it lists for $100, by the time you’ve paid distribution and mandatory advertising costs (you have to pay to get listed) you’re lucky to get $10. I don’t think a lot of developers are eager to return to that model. Apple created the concept, showed the world how it’s done, and that can’t have been cheap. This is really vindictive coming from MS which failed every single of those endeavors. They used to own the smartphone market with their crappy windowsCE, which ran apps that you couldn’t buy anywhere you had to get a “copy from a friend”. They could have developed the App Store. Jealous idiots.

Microsoft released the ARM-based Surface Pro X last years to tepid reviews. It does come with a (sluggish) emulation layer a la Rosetta, but it only supports 32 bit apps.

And this is why we can’t have nice things.

Tim usually mentions Augmented Reality, not Virtual Reality. AR done right has the potential to be a complete game changer. Imagine arrows magically appearing superimposed on the road to take when you’re looking for directions, for instance. Or a price comparator coming up when you pick up an item in a store. The possibilities are endless.