WWDC 2023: What to expect (READ FOR UPDATE)

[leadeater]

56 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Let's at least wait to see what xrOS is all about before opening the (unsurprising) Apple-bashing dances

At least wait before making out it's going to be so amazing against all the odds and all the problems we know about with these headsets 

 

All the core problems with these headsets are not the hardware but having to put on a headset in the first place.

 

Apple is a very user experience focused company, they are also very conservative. If there isn't VERY clear usability benefits from it then Apple's not doing it. So I highly doubt Apple's coming out with some wide pitch about how it can be used for almost anything and will focus on specific areas that actually make sense.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

. If there isn't VERY clear usability benefits from it then Apple's not doing it.

Yer the rumers of them opting for a belt attached battery highlight this, yes its less swish and is not going to attached VC improvements that a status might look for but practically if your using this for more than a few minutes at a time moving the weight off your neck will make a massive difference in the UX of the device.  

The other aspect I would not be surprised apple might get down is input latency, both eye tracking and head movement. The rather large (and unstable) latency that other VR headsets have for this is the main reason many people cant use them for sustained usage, in particular the instability of the tracking latency, the brain can cope (with some practice) with you adding 50ms of latency but that needs to be a predicable 50ms it cant be 48ms and then jump to 55ms and back again.  

I would not be supposed at all if the head transform is something we read directly from the gpu in our vertex shaders and is not a value we get cpu side and encode for an upcoming frame. This would massively help with latency on this as the gpu could then use the most up-to-date transform data when it starts on a frame rather than with most headsets right now use the data that was in the game engine 2 to 3 frames ago (most games are triple buffed these days).   I also expect the same for variable rate shading, infact I would not be surprised if apple completes remove the ability for devs to controle this, all we will do is assign a eye-tracking flag to the pipeline descriptor in the same way as we currently set AA sample rate, then the GPU will pull the most up-to-date eye-location/prediction location at presentation time and use that when tilting and rastising completely bypassing the OS CPU side. 

 

in the last few years apple have been talking publicly, and privately to us devs a lot about frame pacing. Eg if we know our frame will take 6ms to render apple tell us it is better to wait until 6ms before the screen update will take place and submit it then rather than submit it and it finish 2ms before the next screen update leaving making it 2ms older than it needs to be. Apple have been pushing us to not follow the classical PC approach of push as many frames per second instead they want us to time them carefully to finish just in time, a bit like modern production lines.   If you get it perfect you end up with a better result not only since the data is always up-to-date but also you are putting less load on the GPU meaning it can stay at optimal peak perf for longer.

[RedRound2]

On 5/28/2023 at 12:15 PM, Shimejii said:

I wont be wrong about VR. VR has been dead in the water for years, Apple wont change that.  Meta has been an awful company for years so i had 0 expectation from the start, especially when they bought the VR side. Apple will make it a part of their eco-system and make it so its not very usable outside of that.  Its going to be quite some time before VR or a new tech that replaces it actually becomes worth investing in. Its always going to be quite expensive, thats just how this type of tech is. Its whether or not a company can make enough products for it that make it WORTH getting, and as it stands now it still just isnt there.

 

When iphone came out i thought it was going to be a smashing hit, the ipod was great. When they decided to make their own chip in the m1, i thought they had a fairly good chance of doing just fine since theyve been designing their phone chips for a while. Apple has been great at certain things, but pretty abysmal at others. I dont trust them to make a substantial change to the VR space, its just not ready yet. Its going to be yet ANOTHER VR headset that will be tied to that specific eco system and it wont go very far beyond that. First few gens are going to be rough, then they will release the much improved option and then it may get more people into it, but its still going to be limited to what Apple silicon can do. 

 

Given enough time Apple if they put in as much effort into it, i could see them making quite a lot of new and useful things for VR that would be neat, but just as quickly as they can make it, they can just scrap it when its not bringing in the amount of money they thought it would.

You do realize VR/AR at the end of the day is just a powerful processor with a screen attached that you wear around right. Apple does lead in efficient processors, knows how to design a display and has an ecosystem to leverage. Also, they are a company that actually focuses on user experience. So it won't be a huge fail as you seem to believe.

 

Currently, VR requires cutting-edge tech which hence why it will start out expensive. Once the user experience and use cases are nailed (the latter of which is already proven to a large extent, especially for productivity but the former holds it back today) then it's just a matter of time. 

 

For VR/AR, two things hold it back - clunkiness and user experience. Clunkiness can be ignored for now because I don't think Apple is going to market this as something they wear out in public, unlike Google Glass. User experience is what Apple is good at.

[Shuhab_B]

Honestly I don't think the VR/AR Headset will be that much of a big deal. The MBA 15" and macOS 14 are the most exciting thing for me being a huge Apple/Mac fan.

[WolframaticAlpha]

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

At least wait before making out it's going to be so amazing against all the odds and all the problems we know about with these headsets 

"Don't be so skeptical about something that Apple is going to release. Let's wait and watch"
"Their headset is literally the second coming of christ and is going to be more powerful than the one ruling ring and will use 0.0000001 W for its chip and they will sell 11032131948989849389483909028498931849183 units of them"

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

I highly doubt Apple's coming out with some wide pitch about how it can be used for almost anything and will focus on specific areas that actually make sense.

I am highly skeptical of the pricing. Apple surely wouldn't release a headset for 3000 bucks, because it would be DoA for consumers and enterprise isn't in a hurry to buy apple products. They'll need to release something truly groundbreaking for it to be successful, not just a faster and higher resolution version of what meta sells for a 1/3rd of the price. I don't think the leaks are accurate.

 

[HenrySalayne]

12 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

I am highly skeptical of the pricing. Apple surely wouldn't release a headset for 3000 bucks, because it would be DoA for consumers and enterprise isn't in a hurry to buy apple products. They'll need to release something truly groundbreaking for it to be successful, not just a faster and higher resolution version of what meta sells for a 1/3rd of the price. I don't think the leaks are accurate.

I think we shouldn't forget two important things:

- We live in a world with a (not very up to date) Mac Pro. The iGoogles could very well be a niche professional product (at first) to get designers and creatives involved.

- Apple is a marketing- and vision-centred company. It's been a long time since they actually had something new and novel that would actually carry the enthusiasm they are trying to ignite into the world. As a completely new product category in their portfolio and with Apple also being a content creator, they might be covered for this launch. It is not about the hardware but the vision and what they see for the future.

 

14 hours ago, hishnash said:

Yer the rumers of them opting for a belt attached battery highlight this, yes its less swish and is not going to attached VC improvements that a status might look for but practically if your using this for more than a few minutes at a time moving the weight off your neck will make a massive difference in the UX of the device.  

It's a battery. You should be able to move it. I don't the a problem with small head-worn ones and larger belt-worn packs or even a tethered solution (if Apple allows a tethered mode which is sadly very unlikely).

[hishnash]

6 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

It's a battery. You should be able to move it. I don't the a problem with small head-worn ones and larger belt-worn packs or even a tethered solution (if Apple allows a tethered mode which is sadly very unlikely).

So rumers say you will need multiple batteries packs for long sessions so I expect there is a small battery in the headset so that you can hot swap out the waist battery.

They also said it has a USB-C/TB port and I expect like all the TB ports on modern Macs that will take power, the rumers are disrupted on if usage of that port is limited to just developer debug or if it is used as a tether. But I expect it can be used as a tether so that Macs can project windows into the VR space. I would not expect VR applications to run on your Mac and steam that over the tether the ability to efficacy run 2 4k 120hz displays requires very very low latency eye tracking, streaming that over to the Mac and attempting to stream the resultant images back will have the same latency issues as PCVR. 

 

[Commodus]

I'm entirely ready to believe that the initial Apple headset will cost $3,000, and that it'll largely be reserved for pros and hardcore enthusiasts.

 

At the same time, I'm reminded of the rumors in the run-up to the iPad launch. Even the more trustworthy sources thought it would cost around $999... and then it launched for half that. I'm not expecting that here, but I would get a kick out of it if Apple repeated history and sold the headset for much less.

[hishnash]

44 minutes ago, Commodus said:

At the same time, I'm reminded of the rumors in the run-up to the iPad launch. Even the more trustworthy sources thought it would cost around $999... and then it launched for half that. I'm not expecting that here, but I would get a kick out of it if Apple repeated history and sold the headset for much less.

I don't think we will get a retail price at WWDC anyway, we might get a dev kit price at state of the union but retail will likely not ship until oct/nov.  

[saltycaramel]

Inspired by today's LTT video about the Frore AirJet: what tech could the cooling module in Apple's headset be using?

 

Some BOM estimates put it at a cost of $70. 

 

Will it have fans, given the supposedly low profile of the headset? 

 

It needs to cool not just the M2 (a Mac-grade SoC) but also the "R1" video coprocessor responsible of acquiring and stitching together the live video feeds from the 12 cameras of the headset. 

[HenrySalayne]

2 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

Some BOM estimates put it at a cost of $70. 

 

Will it have fans, given the supposedly low profile of the headset? 

 

It needs to cool not just the M2 (a Mac-grade SoC) but also the "R1" video coprocessor responsible of acquiring and stitching together the live video feeds from the 12 cameras of the headset. 

The super-soft silicon-based nano-isobaric polymer gasket which is shielding your eyes from stray light, also has a plasma-etched pico-array of ducts which will directly dump all excess heat into your blood stream. It also has the health benefit of passively burning calories and stimulating circulation. The system is so efficient, Apple reuses old Mac Pro Xeons for their upcoming, state-of-the-art, beyond-future-tech, virtualised-extended-augmented reality headset.

And for those warm summer days, Apple supplies a free cooling solution in their iconic retro colour scheme:

 

 

[Ultraforce]

On 5/27/2023 at 7:22 AM, saltycaramel said:

My prediction for the headset VR gaming line-up at launch:

- Resident Evil Village VR

- No Man's Sky VR

- GRID Legends VR

- What the bat? VR 

- BONUS: secret Hideo Kojima project (“It’s almost like a new medium,” Kojima says. “If this succeeds, it will turn things around, not just in the game industry, but in the movie industry as well.")

- 2D iPad games in floating window mode

 

Non-gaming entertainment:

- MLS and MLB immersive pitch-level sport watching experience (technology from the acquisition of NextVR)

- some AppleTV+ shows natively shot for VR viewing? (like the dinosaurs one by Jon Favreau)

- regular 2D AppleTV+ shows in theater mode

I will say after listening to a podcast of two people who primarily use Apple products talk about having tried out doing some meetings in the Quest PRO I imagine that might be much more important/core to the messaging in the keynote the ability to get an idea of scale or point at a white board in a virtual meeting.

[saltycaramel]

Would well-connected John Gruber (the same Gruber who is scheduled to interview Apple’s highest ranking VPs next Wednesday) make such a comment:

 

https://overcast.fm/+B7NBzAmo0/1:11:33

 

if the new Mac Pro wasn’t coming on Monday? 

 

I’m now slightly more convinced we’ll know about it at this year’s WWDC.

 

Then the timeline for actual availability is anyone’s guess. 

[saltycaramel]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

Would well-connected John Gruber (the same Gruber who is scheduled to interview Apple’s highest ranking VPs next Wednesday) make such a comment:

 

https://overcast.fm/+B7NBzAmo0/1:11:33

 

if the new Mac Pro wasn’t coming on Monday? 

 

I’m now slightly more convinced we’ll know about it at this year’s WWDC.

 

Then the timeline for actual availability is anyone’s guess. 

 

Gotta love Gurman now hedging his bets with that “several” but never mentioning the Mac Pro:

 

 

[Obioban]

On 5/29/2023 at 8:11 AM, WolframaticAlpha said:

I am highly skeptical of the pricing. Apple surely wouldn't release a headset for 3000 bucks, because it would be DoA for consumers and enterprise isn't in a hurry to buy apple products. They'll need to release something truly groundbreaking for it to be successful, not just a faster and higher resolution version of what meta sells for a 1/3rd of the price. I don't think the leaks are accurate.

According to the rumor mill, the first gen isn't intended to be a consumer devices selling in high volumes. It's basically a dev kit sold to the public, with the feature set they'll continue to have as prices come down over time.

 

So, I wouldn't expect it to sell "well" the first year-- I'd expect devs, people with specific use cases that are well suited to it, and hard core rich fans to buy it. Over time, as the price comes down and the uses get more refined by seeing what people do with it, sales will pick up.

 

... which we have seen before. Refining the same product over time is really what Apple does best. The only exception I can think of is iPad, and that was probably because iPad is/was really just a bigger iPhone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[saltycaramel]

There's a new last minute report by The Information about the headset. And it's CRAZY.

 

Quote

The headset apparently features an "unconventional curved design, thinness, and ultralight weight." Several renders seen by The Information "show a piece of curved glass with edges wrapped in a smooth aluminum frame that appears to be slightly thicker than an iPhone." The thin profile requires users who wear glasses to buy prescription lenses that magnetically clip into the headset.

 

Apple had to develop a first-of-its-kind "bent motherboard" to fit inside the headset's curved outer shell. Carbon fiber is used inside the headset to reinforce the structure without adding additional weight.

A small dial is located above the right eye, allowing users to transition between augmented and virtual reality, and a power button is located above the left eye. A round connector that looks similar to an Apple Watch charger attaches to the headset's left temple and runs down via a cable to a waist-mounted battery pack.

The headset's headband is primarily made of a soft material and attached to two short, hard temples which also contain the left and right speakers. A soft, removable cover attaches to the back of the headset for comfort against the wearer's face. Apple is said to have debated adding additional eye-tracking cameras or further adjustments to the motorized lenses to accommodate more face shapes.

Apple's industrial design team apparently pushed for the front of the headset to be made of a thin piece of curved glass, requiring more than a dozen cameras and sensors to be concealed for aesthetic reasons.

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/05/31/report-details-apple-headset-unusual-design/

 

The main body of the "snow goggles" part is only "slightly thicker than an iPhone"

[saltycaramel]

 

Beat Saber for xrOS confirmed?

[saltycaramel]

On 5/28/2023 at 11:42 AM, saltycaramel said:

 

To have your full desktop 42"-display setup in a portable device that is roughly this big?

 

 

 

On 5/28/2023 at 11:44 AM, leadeater said:

And? Does this actually make it a good idea.

 

https://youtu.be/aV8p8MPHnGc?t=582

 

Let’s ditch inefficient, bulky, stuck-in-a-fixed-location physical displays!

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

 

 

https://youtu.be/aV8p8MPHnGc?t=582

 

Let’s ditch inefficient, bulky, stuck-in-a-fixed-location physical displays!

So literally what I said. That is not a headset

 

On 5/28/2023 at 9:44 PM, leadeater said:

Only open glasses can, once you enclose your eyes and translate everything through screens and lenses what is easy and natural completely changes.

 

On 5/29/2023 at 9:11 AM, leadeater said:

All the core problems with these headsets are not the hardware but having to put on a headset in the first place.

 

Why are you showing me a demo of AR glasses as a defense to your overhype about a total different product and experience. VR headsets are complete utter garbage for this, why do you think the video segment is showing AR glasses and not a VR headset.

 

You don't seem to bother to read opposing opinions and you only listen to what is being said when you want to and when it is coming from someone or a company you want to hear it from.

 

How about first actually listen to people so we don't end up here posting a video saying and showing what someone already told you that you argued against before "ditch inefficient, bulky, stuck-in-a-fixed-location physical displays!". I'll take efficient and effect communication over a fancy new display method that may or may not actually be any better. I wonder how much time and effort is wasted in the world due to poor communication and unreceptive listening.

[saltycaramel]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Why are you showing me a demo of AR glasses as a defense to your overhype about a total different product and experience. VR headsets are complete utter garbage for this, why do you think the video segment is showing AR glasses and not a VR headset.

 

You’re both overthinking and underthinking this.

 

Overthinking

Both I and the people in the video are kinda sorta tantalized (not necessarily overly hyped) at the general idea of ditching screens and desktop PCs for all-in-one headmounted PCs. The general idea, specifics notwithstanding, AR, VR o whatever the future holds. An idea that you believe deserves to be met with a discounting “And?”. 

If we add specifics and technical limitations to the mix, then it could very well be that jump-starting the xrOS development on a VR headset was an inevitable milestone on the path to xrOS AR glasses. Maybe in 2029 you’ll run xrOS both on AR glasses and VR headsets, just like you run Windows 11 on both laptops and desktops. Not a good reason to discount the idea as a whole at the eve of the unveiling of 1.0 hardware. 

 

Underthinking

As I’ve previously said, you’re assuming what you know today about VR headsets applies to what Apple (after 8 years of development since the project was greenlighted; by comparison, the iPhone and the Watch both took 3 years) is about to unveil.

You could be right. Or not.

From what we have heard, we could very well call this an “AR/VR crossover”, the missing link between AR and VR, not simply a “VR headset”, by virtue of it being:

- unprecedentedly good at faking the passthru AR mode via cameras

- unprecedentedly thin and light

- unprecedentedly good at mitigating social isolation (thanks to the outer display showing the user’s eyes)

- BONUS: unprecedentedly high-res and  unprecedentedly powerful (for a standalone headset)

 

AR/VR crossover

VR/MR headset 

XR headset 

 

Pick your favorite definition.

But not just “VR headset” for sure. It fails to describe what Apple is trying to achieve with this.

[WolframaticAlpha]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

From what we have heard, we could very well call this an “AR/VR crossover”, the missing link between AR and VR, not simply a “VR headset”, by virtue of it being:

By your description, your AR/VR crossover is still a VR headset that you need to wear that has food passthrough. @leadeateris saying that wearing something big and bulky is not conducive to working 8-9 hours a day. You literally write one post hyping some shit up and write a second one contradicting it.

 

It doesn't matter if it can do passthrough. It is bulky. It is not an AR glass which would be much more useful for that sort of thing. Maybe read the post that he is talking about before needlessly proselytising others about the product.

[saltycaramel]

9 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

something big and bulky.

 

It doesn't matter if it can do passthrough. It is bulky.

 

It is not an AR glass which would be much more useful for that sort of thing. Maybe read the post that he is talking about before needlessly proselytising others about the product.

 

Glad you've seen it and know it's "big and bulky".

Just like he knows that "VR headsets are terrible at this and that, hence Apple's headset can't be good at X". 

The rest of us will know in a few days. 

[leadeater]

33 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Just like he knows that "VR headsets are terrible at this and that, hence Apple's headset can't be good at X". 

We know what VR is bad at, there's been decades of research on it and the reasons for why the problems are like they are studied in depth. That is why there is a very clear terminology difference between a headset and glasses as well as AR vs VR.

 

We don't actually see like screens do, or rather show us "the world" or "images". There is a fundamental difference between how our eyes perceive the world around us versus what a screen display can do and show us. No amount of low latency pass through will ever change that without some huge groundbreaking technology change with displays and image processing themselves.

 

No amount of closing your eyes, flapping your arms and wishful thinking will make you fly. That is the fundamental problem here, Apple cannot change it by doing the same thing but better, faster arm flapping will change nothing.

 

Just like there is a huge difference between a HUD in a car or aircraft, or helmet/head mount display. These overlays can be low quality, low resolution, high latency without actually causing cognitive and visual perception issues. They aren't replacing "the world".

 

It's fine that this Apple product won't be good at everything, so what? It'll at least be great for what VR is actually good for. When did this become not good enough?

 

Also I'd like to point out I never discounted the concept. I said it's crap and will always be crap on a VR headset and that is won't be what Apple is going to be pushing for this product coming out now.  Fantastical futures are irrelevant to today and pointing out that Pages, Numbers etc etc are and will be terrible experience on this upcoming device as reported to be. Throwing out a list of actually good Mac applications, no dispute there, as justification or evidence or whatever that this new headset is going to be so great is the problem. You're not actually stopping and thinking about real user experience at all.

 

Why would PA want to put on a headset to type up a word document, check emails and update a spreadsheet. They wouldn't, I wouldn't, you wouldn't.

[HenrySalayne]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

Why would PA want to put on a headset to type up a word document, check emails and update a spreadsheet. They wouldn't, I wouldn't, you wouldn't.

I would.

I think there is an actual market for augmented reality desktops. I can carry a keyboard and a mouse while traveling, but not a dual-43" screen setup. Screen real-estate on the go could be revolutionary.

Adding a powerful camera system with an intuitive interface could be a game changer for some areas like construction work documentation.

However, these are not consumer applications but Mac Pro territory and we all know how well Apple supports this particular side of their business. In the long term Apple as a corporation has no interest in niche markets with a very limited number of users. It would be incredibly surprising if this new VR headset would't be mainly recreation and broad-mass focussed.

 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

I would.

I think there is an actual market for augmented reality desktops. I can carry a keyboard and a mouse while traveling, but not a dual-43" screen setup. Screen real-estate on the go could be revolutionary.

Adding a powerful camera system with an intuitive interface could be a game changer for some areas like construction work documentation.

However, these are not consumer applications but Mac Pro territory and we all know how well Apple supports this particular side of their business. In the long term Apple as a corporation has no interest in niche markets with a very limited number of users. It would be incredibly surprising if this new VR headset would't be mainly recreation and broad-mass focussed.

 

You say that but have you really thought about how that would actually be like. You might want to try it but is it actually something you would do every time always. Again AR sure, VR headset no.

 

Also it doesn't have to be broad-mass focused at all, that's a bad assumption. iMac Pro, Mac Studio and Mac Pro 100% are not, Apple isn't afraid of products like this and a VR headset would be no different.

 

Apple is not going to market a product on a "ooo shiny" use case that will get dropped after a few tries because it's actually impractical and horrible experience. In an office situation have you ever tried interacting with someone with a VR headset on? Would that be conducive to a good working environment?