Read Mark Zuckerberg’s email (see pics) responding to the Apple Vision Pro demo.

I found it interesting. A big giant has been awakened, he knows it, he’s trying to reassure his troops.

The giant is still coming.

#Apple #Meta #VR

@davemark Dave, we've got a lot of vision impaired people on Mastodon who would like to read stuff we put up as screengrabs. Could you edit this post and add the text as a description? Fortunately, the character count's damned generous. I seldom bang up against it. Thanks.

@JamesWNeal Absolutely. Laziness on my part. Appreciate the reminder!

@davemark no prob. I probably mess up more than you. ;-) Nice thing here is that occasionally people who never talked to each other on the Bird Site do so here. communication. It's a thing. Thanks for listening, as they say.

@JamesWNeal cheers!

@davemark I have to agree with Zuck on this one, they have totally different approaches, and even the terms they use to describe what is essentially the same concept of #XR: Meta uses the term #Metaverse because they want it to be an interconnected space where users can get together and play/interact.
Apple uses the term #SpatialComputing as their focus so far is expand your computer use cases to a 3D interactive space - indicating that they see the platform as a next-gen computing experience.

@davemark In my personal use case, I'm more aligned with the Apple vision, however the #MetaQuest seems to be enough for what I need to work in #VR, and the #Quest3 will definitely be an improvement at a price I can justify, while the #VisionPro would require I get into the Apple ecosystem (I use mostly Android, Linux and Windows, no Mac or iOS) plus I cannot justify the price of it in my budget.

@davemark his reply brings up deja vu feelings from the iPhone launch, with Microsoft and Blackberry putting down Apple’s idea for the phone.

@davemark @techviator I was waiting to see what Apple would do with regards to sharing content between users and as far as I can tell, that’s not a priority for them — at least not with the first release. So personally, I’m more inclined to go with Meta for the time being since the headset is cheaper, will probably work for most of my use cases, and I can wait and see what Apple does in a couple of years …

But on a philosophy level (if the stated philosophy is genuine and not just words), I agree more with Meta — I want mixed reality to be about sharing, not about people sitting alone with their headsets 😛

@jimmylittle I’m sure that’s one way to look at it but it all depends on your point of view 🙂 I want to be able to watch the same movie with my wife sitting in the same room on two different Vision Pro headsets since we both want huge displays but still want to sit together — as far as I can tell, that might not be possible with Vision Pro.

Nor would sharing headsets with other people work too well, as far as I can tell (given that I haven’t tried the headset myself) since each headset appears to be customised for a particular person in terms of the light seal etc.

So yes, remote sharing would work fine, sure, but that’s not what *I* am looking for 🙂

@davemark @techviator

@davemark @jimmylittle @f @techviator What you describe, watching a movie together on multiple devices, is exactly what SharePlay is meant for! It’s literally the first use-case they name every time they mention SharePlay since its introduction. It works today on existing Apple platforms, and it will work on visionOS too.

@JackNutting @davemark @jimmylittle @f @techviator Thanks Jack, exactly what I was thinking as I read down the thread.
I, for one, can’t wait to own one. Isolation when I want it with a single large screen (I hate multiple monitors) and I can always *take it off*

@JackNutting Not to be difficult here, Jack, but does SharePlay work in a plane with no WiFi? I had considered this when SharePlay was announced — because I’ve been looking at shared media consumption for a very long time 🙂 We (my wife and I) travel a lot and we actually share an iPad (with shared audio) to watch movies on a plane at the moment since we don’t want to watch in-flight entertainment. So what we’re looking for is one (mythical) device which covers all scenarios.

Again, I realize that my use cases not the common use cases (and no, I’m not trying to be intentionally difficult). But my original point was that Apple did not stress shared consumption when they introduced Vision Pro — it was all about one person doing things, not a family (or several friends) doing anything together.

@davemark i believe it will come down to the same issue that led Apple from the iPod to iPhone.

People have room for one mobile device. Apple knew that cell phones would win over any standalone music player, while Apple could also deliver a music player, because iPhone was an entire software platform.

Similarity, a connected platform headset wins over a standalone VR headset, while Apple can also deliver a VR experience… because Apple Vision is a platform.

@f Ah, that’s a valid point for sure! An edge case, but desirable for sure. I don’t know the answer. Apple does have some other technologies that will establish a direct device-to-device wifi connection (like Migration Assistant) but I do not know if SharePlay can function that way.

@JackNutting I had kind of dismissed SharePlay after the original announcements since I didn’t think it would fit our use case — believe me, I even considered trying a portable router in a plane so that we’d have a local network to try it 😛

But I did some checking today after you reminded me of it and it appears (and I might be wrong here) that it’s largely tied to FaceTime (and iMessages) still? So if you can’t connect to one of those apps, you can’t use SharePlay is my guess …

But I do hope Apple finds a way to make things work without a network by creating local connections possibly similar to how they use the W1 chips in AirPods and Beats headsets. At least, one can dream, right? 🙂

@f We may be in luck on that front! I’m not yet sure of the details, but this week they did mention that in iOS 17 you can initiate a SharePlay session just by bringing two devices near each other. Whether this works without any network available, I don’t know. But it may!

https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-17-preview/

@JackNutting I think I totally missed that one, so thanks 🙂 Now I’m almost tempted to install iOS 17 beta on a couple of devices to see how things go … unfortunately, I believe my usual test device (iPhone X) is not eligible for iOS 17. Figures 😛

@f I skimmed through the transcript of a talk from this week called “Add Shareplay to your app” and it does say explicitly that in addition to starting a SharePlay session over FaceTime or Messages, you’ll now be able to start one via AirDrop! So it seems like the use-case you mentioned will be easy to achieve in iOS 17, and will surely be present in visionOS too 😁

@JackNutting Cool, thanks 🙂 Will go through that session and also start experimenting as soon as I can set up two iOS 17 devices. This sounds great! Looking forward to seeing how it works …

@davemark

• Apple shoot for profit over market reach with the iPhone and Watch. So having more users is cold comfort for Meta if the cool product isn’t theirs while the more profitable one is Apple’s. We all expect Apple to iterate and bring prices down with a non-pro model (at the very least).
(1/2)

@davemark
(2/2)
• Meta goggle users also sit alone in rooms. But when not alone there are even more disconnected from people in the same room than Vision users. The software for Vision isn’t really there yet so yes Apple showed work uses more. Social connections will come and Apply has the functions to enable sharing with non-spatial users, so I’d say there’s a better story for Vision.

This memo was meant to reassure the troops (and to be leaked), not give away his fears.

@davemark “But look, I think that their announcement reall showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important….
More importantly, our vision for the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social. It's about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways...”

…in such a way that Facebook/Meta owns all our users’ data and can rape and pillage the world!!!!