tht

hexclock said:

The article doesn’t show any clear pictures of open menu bar items, but do they have keyboard shortcuts for them, and are shortcuts customizable in any way?

Apple's website doesn't seem to have an image of the Files.app Menu Bar, but it does have one for Pages.app:


I would assume keyboard shortcuts are not customizable this round. Hmm, is there a globe key on the onscreen keyboard?

If we are talking Star Trek stuff, there's a gazillion more things I'd want over whatever OpenAI is trying to do. Replicator. Replicator, man. Food, whatever object fits in the replicator, drinks. Giving me food in 1 minute, without any prep whatsoever, no cleanup, would save me like 3 hours a day. A transporter. An FTL starship. Inertial dampeners. Whatever energy source that is powering this stuff. You notice that there aren't any bathrooms in Star Trek? On any scifi property? What's up with that? Nobody needs to poop.

Last thing I'd want is the ship computer voice interface or a phaser.

My record is indeed broken here. If this thing is a voice-only interface, it fails. Like, is the life cycle complete for the Amazon Echo and smart speakers? Nobody likes to discuss them anymore? This OpenAI thing will be a smart speaker, but with a set of cameras? Amazon already has a hardware and is just waiting on their chatbot to mature?

I've been thinking about voice interfaces that people like, and I'm coming up empty. We have experienced a voice interface, for most of our lives, in the form of automated telephone help systems. Everyone hates them, right? Chatbots won't fix that because their purpose is to drive down costs to do customer support. With chatbots, it will just be a nicer, more insidious way not to give you the support you want.

Is anyone calling smart speakers a success? Whenever I hear media talk about them today, it really seems to be about sound quality, not voice interface capability. In 2015, 2016 though, it was a similar narrative today as well. Amazon was all in on making Alexa this super useful voice assistant, able to do translation, buying stuff, doing things for you. Apple was way behind and if they didn't do anything, they would be doomed. What's the narrative now on Alexa? Also ran? Boring because of LLM chatbots?

So the Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant hardware, basically a version 1 of chat interfaces, ended up being not much of anything? Nobody made any profits, not even Apple. Rumor is that they are breaking even on the hardware, while everyone else took a loss.

The hype train was going for the LLM chatbot assistants the last couple of years with the Humane AI pin, R1 Rabbit, who knows what else. That ran its course in like 1 month after the hardware came out and nobody found a use for them. At least a use that was good enough to overcome the deficiencies of v1.0 wearable hardware. OpenAI is trying again. What's going to be different this time?

If it is a voice-only user interface, it fails. LLM chatbots are a service, like search is a service. It's not a hardware product. If it didn't have a text or prompt interface, I think would be failing too. Fortunately, it does have a text interface. Apple is uniquely adverse to CLI interfaces. It's been a detriment for them. So, I'd hope they would change from this perspective, but hardware wise, they have their bases covered.

mpantone said:

Tim & Co. don't want to serve niche markets. As we all know, they pulled the plug on the popular iPhone mini series after just two releases, abandoning a market that is unserved by the competition. Maybe the margins were too low. And I can't imagine the margins on an iPhone Thin will be much better (apart from a simpler camera module). They also ditched the "low cost" plasticky iPhone 5c after one release.

For there to be any growth in their iPhone business, they need to focus on emerging markets not to chase the 1% of their mature markets that might want to upgrade to something flashier. In the end it's still just another phone. The iPhone Thin won't do anything better than the standard iPhone; the leakers and rumor mongers have only said it'll be thin, there are no other unique features that will set the handset apart.

I'm still baffled why they would want to market an iPhone Thin. Sure, the initial model will sell well but I don't see any other reason for its existence other than pure aesthetics. For sure it's not going to be the performance champion nor will it be priced as an entry level model. Yes, we'll see it all over Instagram and Tik Tok but that's not going to build the user base in Ivory Coast or Bangladesh.

It’s usually down to margins. 

twolf2919 said:

Wesley Hilliard said:

9secondkox2 said:

Difficult to see apple producing snother headset. Maybe if the did a super cheap version. But not just changing a few things. 

Either go all in with glasses for mass market or do the cheap tethered thing, but with great cameras and screens. Otherwise it will just be the same or maybe rvrn worse now that the early adopters are saturated with the expensive version one. 

twolf2919 said:

9secondkox2 said:

Difficult to see apple producing snother headset. Maybe if the did a super cheap version. But not just changing a few things. 

Either go all in with glasses for mass market or do the cheap tethered thing, but with great cameras and screens. Otherwise it will just be the same or maybe rvrn worse now that the early adopters are saturated with the expensive version one. 

Agree - I can't imagine Apple doubling-down on a design they know didn't get enough sales.  They need to face reality: there simply isn't much of a mass market for a device costing multiple thousands of dollars that can only really be used in private, since it's too cumbersome to use on the go - and you look like a  complete tool if you do.

To this day I have no idea why Tim Cook let himself by led into this technological dead end called the Vision Pro.  i remember him clearly stating that Apple's next big thing would be AR glasses.  Somehow he got convinced by someone that these devices must be standalone products rather than an iPhone dependent one like Apple Watch and AirPods.  Unfortunately, that decision meant the future devices needed to cram a lot of CPU power and battery capacity into what needed to be a very light, small device - glasses!  The AVP VR headset became their first stab at it.  But it seems obvious that they will never be able to shrink that down to glasses anyone is willing to wear.

Google produced useful AR glasses TWELVE years ago.  If Apple hadn't gone down the wrong path, I'm sure they could have developed a sleek, much better product given all the miniaturization that's taken place win a decade.

Both of your assumptions are based on the idea that Apple sees Apple Vision Pro as some kind of failure. Only Apple knows what its goals for the device were and if it met them or have been satisfied. Your personal opinions are not part of Apple's calculus here.

Your statement that "Only Apple knows what its goals were" is not really true.  There were plenty of supply-chain based projections made that indicated Apple wanted to initially make 1m units the first year (e.g. read Financial Times article https://www.ft.com/content/b6f06bde-17b0-4886-b465-b561212c96a9?ref=spyglass.org ) and had to cut that back due to both manufacturing and demand issues.  They ended up making just around 400k units.  Apple stating, after the fact, that they were happy with the demand and they never had mass market goals was just to save face.

Wayne Ma, from the Information, had the definitive bit of information on the number of Vision Pro units that could be sold, 6 to 12 months before the AVP started shipping. 

"Our next friend in the Vision lineup is so thin, features titanium to reduce weight, including the connectors and the battery, and all comes with iPhone 5-era black- which looks like graphite dark blue. And be noted: this might not called as ---Pro but you can Air it out."

Unless there is a translation error, this rumor is bonkers crazy bullshit. Titanium is about 1.67x heavier than aluminum. You may be able to reduce the overall weight of it by using a thinner titanium frame, relative to an aluminum one, but aluminum will still be lighter. This isn't an application that needs a lot of strength. There isn't a win with titanium for this application. Not only that, titanium is perceived, and is, as premium material. It's not sensible to sell it as a down market device relative to the Vision Pro. I'd rate it as "bonkers bullshit" not "possible".

Their best option imo is to use an A19 Pro, use a more power efficient "R2" packaged inside the A19 Pro, and move it to an audio strap. This eliminates the two fans and a PCB. It might still need a fan to air out the volume between your eyes and the headset. If so, I'd out it in the other audio strap. This will make it thinner and lighter, and needs less pressure against your face.

They still need to double the resolution of the cameras, increase the PPD of the display by about 50%, increase FOV to, what, 150° (?), and put a battery into the unit. These pass-through headsets won't be mature for a long ways still.

The glasses form factor is still 10 years away, and it will be worse than the current AVP for everything but the wearability. See-through headsets will come with a whole set of issues. It's not a replacement. It's just another form factor that enables a different set of applications.