by grork on 6/21/21, 6:51 PM with 230 comments
by andrewmcwatters on 6/21/21, 7:41 PM
It was as if they said, OK, here's the supermarket, now vendors, create stuff and we'll stock the shelves.
Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. Which means the best software you're going to get for Windows that isn't long-lived incumbent software like Creative Cloud is going to be... over Google Chrome (or Microsoft Edge).
OK, but Microsoft is in the best position to create great, integrated, first-class technologies that build on how great Windows is. But they don't. I have mixed feelings about this, because when Apple does it, they basically put people out of business.
But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more.
For those who haven't experienced it yet, or can't afford Apple products, they're missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of.
Or, idk, I'm blind because I think Apple products are so great. The lattermost is probably more likely.
by streamofdigits on 6/21/21, 8:44 PM
People got busy with computers when computers were the size of houses. They carried mobile phones when phones were the size of suitcases. Is the proto-AR revolution happening somewhere out there without anybody noticing?
Its possible that there is no low hanging AR fruit. That somebody has to do the difficult job of climbing up the AR tree so to speak (refine the technology until it feels like magic).
It just seems that this would be an exception in how things played out so far in the "digital transformation" journey. Its the nature of the human brain to fill-in the gaps and overlook the rough edges when it really has an incentive to do so.
[0] investment in the sense of personal time by users, creators, business people etc to really learn and use the technology to scratch whatever itch they found it is scratching...
by SheinhardtWigCo on 6/21/21, 7:50 PM
by rektide on 6/21/21, 7:56 PM
Apple also makes good use of Bluetooth for airdrop & wifi password sharing, something else google is light-years behind in.
Good writeup, interesting, even if it seems a bit (quite) oversold to me. Makes me think of Benjamin Bratton's The Stack, the many tiers that compose the digital.
by Animats on 6/21/21, 7:40 PM
AppClips. Drive-by installs. What could possibly go wrong?
by chrismsimpson on 6/21/21, 11:02 PM
It is bad enough that it reminds me of Carbon and the related legion of missteps that hurt Apple badly some 20 years ago and pissed off a lot of loyal developers.
Honestly, SwiftUI combined with Apples now complete market dominance is enough to make me reconsider my career path.
Just because they’re so big doesn’t mean they can do no wrong and several of their recent technologies have been regressive.
by narrator on 6/21/21, 9:59 PM
Jokes aside. What is the mission statement here, what is the dream? Make you never want to interact with the real world again? Help you manage your to do list better?
I feel there was much more of a mission statement for mobile back when everyone was stuck on public transit and at the office for hours every day. You could finally make your life on transit and at the office more meaningful by integrating your personal life with that through your phone.
What's the dream now? I don't get where all this is going unless it's like you're never going to leave your house again, so escape into VR.
by mncharity on 6/21/21, 9:34 PM
I'm unfamiliar with SwiftUI, but fwiw, I found the extensions needed for CSS3D to support AR to be surprisingly small.
A few years back, having a custom browser-based VR stack with passthrough AR, I sketched a talk for the BostonVR meetup, to give around April Fools. It would have purported to be an introductory onboarding demo, of newly available CSS3D extensions for AR. With support for placement in realspace, billboards, HUD overlays, integrated multiple displays, position aware and 3D displays. The extension needed was surprisingly minor. The talk would have been basically "introductory CSS positioning, in a slightly enriched context", which I expected to be quite believable, followed by a "surprise! - the making of the demo spike". I don't quite remember why it didn't happen.
> 2(.5)D experiences
Shallow-3D UIs seemingly have a lot of potential, but don't get much discussion.
Meta: I wish HN discussions around AR were of higher quality. It's be clear for years that Apple was pursing this. Being unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem, I'd have liked to see more discussion of what those pieces and their characteristics might suggest about the future. Or for instance, of whether Apple is doing any CEP complex event processing, or retraction of app state changes, to support input with diverse latencies.
by tomc1985 on 6/21/21, 8:03 PM
Like jfc people, 'End users will experience the metaverse through the default device delivered experience.' sounds like the most doublespeakiest doublespeak ever to have been written.
I love tech and this lofty shit makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Speak plainly and simply, folks.
by Ankintol on 6/21/21, 7:50 PM
My own prediction, using many of the same data points as the author, is that Apple is trying to create a suite of features that act as a sort of Software Personal Assistant. For years Apple has consistently put in better sensors and larger TPUs than strictly necessary for the expected lifetime of the device. We're already seeing some of the results of this with the Health app.
Apple understands the profit potential of platforms, so they'll make some of the data that enables these features to App Developers and that in turn may enable AR, but I doubt any Apple executives are seriously focused on bringing AR capabilities to developers.
by mark_l_watson on 6/21/21, 10:13 PM
SwiftUI 2 is so much better. I am taking a 50 hour course, and spent a few hours hacking this morning. So much better than when I tried it 14 months ago.
Spacial Audio works really well. They are probably using something called Head Related Transfer Functions, which I used at my company’s VR lab in the mid-1990s.
The example AR Swift Playgrounds examples are also pretty cool.
I agree with the general premise of the article!
by ryanmarsh on 6/21/21, 10:57 PM
by kyle-rb on 6/21/21, 9:12 PM
The Shazam stuff seems very limited in use case, and I'm annoyed at "AppClips" because they should just be websites.
Notes+Spotlight+Shared with you all seem like they're inventing new paradigms to avoid ever adding a user file system on iOS, since Apple is opposed to that. It's possible that those new paradigms will be great, but I think they'd be better if Apple gave up a little control.
by titanomachy on 6/21/21, 10:14 PM
I'm not convinced that this is true. Round-trip latency has gotten a lot lower, especially if you take edge computing into account. 20-30ms round-trip is not unusual. If your mic feed is being streamed in real-time, and the program is able to achieve a high-confidence prediction at (or before) the moment you finish speaking, I think it should be possible to deliver an experience that feels instantaneous, at least for users with cutting-edge connectivity. For visual interactions, 100ms feels instantaneous; I bet tolerance for spoken interactions is even higher.
by Ono-Sendai on 6/22/21, 1:20 AM
by zelon88 on 6/21/21, 10:54 PM
by lazyfuture on 6/21/21, 9:27 PM
Sent from my iPhone
by nottorp on 6/21/21, 10:14 PM
And people with prescription glasses won't be able to afford the Apple Prescription(tm) anyway.
by th3h4mm3r on 6/21/21, 8:43 PM
by germinalphrase on 6/22/21, 4:19 PM
by SkyMarshal on 6/21/21, 7:25 PM
by meh99 on 6/21/21, 7:48 PM
by jccalhoun on 6/21/21, 8:00 PM
by vincent-toups on 6/21/21, 8:12 PM
by dangus on 6/21/21, 7:12 PM
However…I’m sorry, the article as a whole just leaves me with the taste of Apple butt-licking.
So many of these parts of this “metaverse” are typical recurring revenue and ecosystem lock-in encouragements.
Find My: Let’s sell some high profit margin trackers and keychains.
SharePlay: let’s sell more TV+ subscriptions.
Universal Control: platform lock-in: make you question using a Windows desktop instead of an iMac if you already own an iPad.
Spatial Audio: sell more headphones
Notes features: sell more News+ subscriptions, more vendor lock-in.
ShazamKit: data mine advertising info. Yes, Apple has ad platforms, and with each passing day their business model creeps closer and closer to Google’s (e.g., When they inevitably drop Yelp in favor of their own review system, or if they launch their own search engine)
(Apple can still mine data and use it to sell you things and understand what you’re likely to buy even if they “respect” your privacy and leave all the data on-device. They can still get you to click an affiliate link or buy an app without leaving the realm of on-device ML.
And remember that Apple’s marketing is not the same as their documented privacy policy.