Apple Plans a 3D World and Video Service for Its Mixed-Reality Headset (bloomberg.com) 31
Apple's next major product -- a mixed-reality headset that it hopes will vault the company into a new era of computing -- isn't set to arrive until next year. But job listings and personnel changes at the company give a preview of some of the device's capabilities. From a report: Now we're gleaning additional details, thanks to Apple job listings published over the last several months and changes to the team behind the future headset -- the Technology Development Group, or TDG. A few job listings indicate that Apple is ramping up its work to bolster the device with content. The company is searching for a software producer with experience in visual effects and game asset pipelines who can create digital content for augmented- and virtual-reality environments.
The listings also imply that Apple is looking to build a video service for the headset featuring 3D content that can be played in virtual reality. This would follow the company's 2020 acquisition of NextVR, which partnered with artists and professional sports leagues to transmit VR content to headsets. Apple is also looking for engineers who can work on development tools geared toward virtual and augmented reality. Unsurprisingly, it appears that the company wants its new operating system to use App Intents, which lets apps work with features like Siri and Shortcuts.
"We are looking for a software engineer who will work on the App Intents framework to help design and implement solutions to unlock deep system intelligence, enable new developer tools, and facilitate novel user interactions from application data models which are leveraged by a variety of system services such as Shortcuts, Siri, Search, and more," one job listing for the TDG department says. The most interesting job listing is one that specifically calls out the development of a 3D mixed-reality world, suggesting that Apple is working on a virtual environment that is similar to the metaverse -- though don't expect Apple to embrace that term. Its marketing chief said at a recent event that metaverse is "a word I'll never use."
The listings also imply that Apple is looking to build a video service for the headset featuring 3D content that can be played in virtual reality. This would follow the company's 2020 acquisition of NextVR, which partnered with artists and professional sports leagues to transmit VR content to headsets. Apple is also looking for engineers who can work on development tools geared toward virtual and augmented reality. Unsurprisingly, it appears that the company wants its new operating system to use App Intents, which lets apps work with features like Siri and Shortcuts.
"We are looking for a software engineer who will work on the App Intents framework to help design and implement solutions to unlock deep system intelligence, enable new developer tools, and facilitate novel user interactions from application data models which are leveraged by a variety of system services such as Shortcuts, Siri, Search, and more," one job listing for the TDG department says. The most interesting job listing is one that specifically calls out the development of a 3D mixed-reality world, suggesting that Apple is working on a virtual environment that is similar to the metaverse -- though don't expect Apple to embrace that term. Its marketing chief said at a recent event that metaverse is "a word I'll never use."
Oh goody... (Score:2, Insightful)
As if Meta's giant flop wasn't a red flag.
Re:Oh goody... (Score:4, Insightful)
As if Meta's giant flop wasn't a red flag.
Apple is making a headset. They aren't betting the company on it like Zuckerberg did.
Re: Oh goody... (Score:2)
They aren't betting the company on it like Zuckerberg did.
Of course they are; like others, they recognize that, for better or worse, AR is the future - it'll be too useful and addictive not to be.
However, unlike Zuck, they'll also recognize that it's a matter of timing - pull the trigger too quick (i.e. release some nausea-inducing bullshit with a narrow FoV before there's even an ecosystem in place) and you'll miss the critical window.
Apple's timing this a little more carefully... and it's still too soon.
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Useful, for some cases sure, addictive, not so much I think. There's just something offputting in mixing the RGB camera feed (or the clear view) with computer genererated graphics -- it stands out in an unappealing way that always reminds you that it is a matrix of pixels pasted onto the real view.
So I think people will tolerate it for its usefulness, but won't look forward to experiencing it.
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How long have been companies trying to do a full VR, or even an AR setup? Do MOOCs count? MUDs? Furcadia? Second Life?
We see companies, time after time, trying to get this stuff going, just because if they do get buy-in, it means a ton of monetization on everything, be it ads one can't look away from, volume of sounds that can't be muted, forced interaction with stuff, tons of microtransactions, NFTs, and so on. However, so far, people are just not interested. Real life sucks enough, but at least you
Re: Oh goody... (Score:1)
However, so far, people are just not interested
Correct. However, you've failed to account for the fact that there's nothing viable yet for them to be interested in.
Apparently, the ability to perform basic extrapolation is a dying art.
Re:Oh goody... (Score:5, Insightful)
People miss too that iOS has had top notch AR libraries from Apple for awhile now, and they keep making them better. They've been working on the ecosystem for it for a long time so that when the glasses or headset or whatever they decide to ship shows up, the whole thing already has a lot of things ready to go for it. Love or hate Apple the device will be interesting when it arrives.
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You assert that their headset will be interesting on arrival, but all you can provide as evidence are... libraries? Someone built a cool app to help you visualize the Dewey Decimal System across the shelves?
Wait, you meant like, header files? There's a lot more that goes into a killer app than that.
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I think that Zuckerberg didn't 'bet the company', so much as that has been the popular scapegoat for Facebook's problems, which would have happened with or without the VR initiative.
Facebook has seen the usual 'fad' cycle of social media come for it (TikTok engagement largely displaced Facebook engagement), saw their Apple app lose access to some data, diminishing the value of what they were selling to advertisers, and also faced with a lot of displeasure for how the platform was used for misinformation and
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While the VR effort hasn't panned out as Zuckerberg might have hoped, I don't think it's cost structure has been anything like an existential threat to the company.
Keep in mind that the direct cash outlay isn't the only cost of Meta's excursion into VR. There is also the opportunity-cost (i.e. every hour a Meta employee spends working on VR is an hour that employee isn't spending making some other, potentially more important, aspect of Facebook work better) and the reputational cost (i.e. if Meta becomes a laughingstock, they will lose advertising revenue, mindshare, and marketshare, all of which are important for a company that relies on having a huge customer base
Re:Oh goody... (Score:4, Insightful)
More notably, they seem to be going after "mixed reality" headsets, implying that the larger part of their business model will be overlaying computed information over direct vision in the real world (rather than an artificial world.)
Re: (Score:3)
"As if Meta's giant flop wasn't a red flag."
This is iMeta, completely different.
There is literally no evidence for this - 2+2=8 (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like a heavily editorialized, clickbait headline. The idea that Apple’s building their own metaverse or “3D world” seems largely based on the following quote:
“You will work closely with Apple’s UI framework, human interface designers and system capabilities teams—pushing you to think outside-the-box, and solve incredibly challenging and interesting problems in the 3D application space”
Which doesn’t actually seem to indicate anything about a “3D world” other than—shocked pikachu face—Apple’s developing VR applications for their VR (and AR) headset. Who woulda thunkit?
Cisco webex (Score:2)
I have meetings with apple for their fuckery regularly and they use webex. If they can't/won't even do that, despite many monkey's love of facetime, why would you buy a VR anything from them?
A VR world from Apple? Not anytime soon (Score:5, Insightful)
For one, the report doesn’t actually suggest anything of the sort. There’s no indication in it that Apple is building their own metaverse. They’re hiring devs to work in that “space”, i.e. in that field, which is not a reference to a virtual world like the clickbait headlines would lead you to think. Seriously, it’s false reporting.
Just as important, Apple has had its nose bloodied with failed attempts at social platforms. Remember Ping, the music-driven social network built into iTunes that allowed listeners to connect with artists? No? That’s the point. Apple doesn’t know how to build, curate, and moderate social networks. It isn’t in their DNA and I’d argue it has the sense to stay out of them at the moment, given the direction the cultural and political winds are shifting.
Third, while Jobs had a history of throwing shade at a technology before they launched something in that area, Tim’s comments against VR are in the same breath as comments that they think there’s something very interesting in AR. A virtual world doesn’t make much sense without VR, but it seems clear Apple wants to get into the AR game specifically.
Re: (Score:2)
A virtual world doesnâ(TM)t make much sense without VR, but it seems clear Apple wants to get into the AR game specifically.
If you have the hardware to do AR well, you have the hardware to do VR. There is no specifically-AR-game.
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On the hardware front, you can have 'adequate' capability for productivity/casual AR and not be even vaguely equipped for VR. Think HUD style display on glasses. The 'real world' you see just as if you were using traditional glasses. It will never hit 'opaque' so it won't be good for VR. It's fundamentally limited to a relatively narrow field of view, since expanding the view would require optics that would distort the real world. Also, people could still see your actual eyes.
A hypothetical VR headset w
Re: (Score:1)
If you have the hardware to do AR well, you have the hardware to do VR.
On the hardware front, you can have 'adequate' capability for productivity/casual AR and not be even vaguely equipped for VR.
How is that a response to what I said?
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The person claimed that they predict Apple to be AR focused and ignoring VR, you claimed that there's no such thing as AR without also getting VR, I pointed out that there is very much a concept of AR without VR capability, both in hardware and in software.
Re: (Score:1)
You continue to misrepresent my claim. I can't figure out if you can't read, won't read, or are just being willfully disingenuous, but all of those options are fucking tiresome.
Re: (Score:2)
You continue to misrepresent my claim.
Perhaps you unintentionally misrepresented your own claim, via poor or ambiguous wording? AFAICT Junta's responses were perfectly reasonable, and you're being cranky and tendentious.
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You can't read either? Fuck. Look, here was the relevant snip:
If you have the hardware to do AR well, you have the hardware to do VR.
On the hardware front, you can have 'adequate' capability
What I said was the hardware to do AR well and then what he said, and fucking put in quote marks as if I had said it, was adequate. He completely ignored what I said, and willfully too. Further, the idea that Apple would half-ass the hardware is bananas. It just made sense on no level whatsoever, and it was not a response to what I actually said.
I made my claim quite clearly, he went after a straw man instead, and you claim to have read the threa
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If you have the hardware to do AR well, you have the hardware to do VR. There is no specifically-AR-game.
You're mistaken on multiple counts, but let me just focus on the fact that you aren't accounting for hardware merely being the first gate a company needs to clear, not the last, and that the differences between AR and VR only becomes more stark as you clear each gate. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest that these are (some of) the gates that currently exist between where we are now and an idealized future where AR/VR is ubiquitous:
1. Hardware is "good enough"
2. Cost is low enough
3. Software is "good enough
Does it come with porn? (Score:1)
Not worth reading... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Apple has been 'on the verge' of a big VR/AR play, to be released within the next 3 months for about 4 years now.
Media coverage of Apple VR efforts is just utterly worthless at this point. It's clear they are at least dabbling, but extrapolating that into concrete predictions is just not happening.
Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Time for eWorld 2.0!
They need to stop trying to make VR walled gardens (Score:1)
It will be a virtual walled garden (Score:2)
Boring (Score:1)
More boring plans from Apple that no one wants, needs, or is even asking for.
This can only turn out well (Score:1)