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by shock-value 1849 days ago
The things in your first paragraph are all useful, but not killer apps (IMO). Just nice conveniences.

My prediction is that Pokemon Go will prove to be by far the biggest splash to have been made in the phone AR space, and in the larger scheme of gaming it so far hasn't been more than a long-since-passed fad.

I'm pretty doubtful that even glasses-mounted AR will catch on among consumers in day-to-day life -- but there could be significant specific use cases e.g. education, certain professions, etc. On-the-job type stuff.

Having experienced VR as an owner of a Quest 2 linked to a VR capable PC -- I'm very bullish on VR in the home entertainment space -- not just games but also pre-recorded or live video content, etc. Not sure about social but I'm sure Facebook will try.

2 comments

> The things in your first paragraph are all useful, but not killer apps (IMO). Just nice conveniences.

I think "nice conveniences" might move slower and get less attention, but in aggregate I suspect they're actually more important for a major long-lasting general-purpose computing platform than "killer apps." We always think of "killer apps" for smaller, narrower, shorter-lived platforms, like a particular gaming console when it launches, but less so for bigger, broader, older platforms like the Internet, personal computers, or smartphones. These huge platforms all had some things which were called "killer apps" (mostly early in their history), but I think we should attribute their longevity and ubiquity more to a massive aggregation of what could be called "nice conveniences." And my impression is that Facebook's bet is that AR/VR will be one of these huge, broad, ubiquitous, long-lasting platforms.

> The things in your first paragraph are all useful, but not killer apps (IMO). Just nice conveniences.

Agreed. A killer app is something you use daily.

That said, I can't wait for the furniture testing app. That would be very useful.

Amazon app already has this built in, btw. Most furniture type items have a "view in your room" button that launches an AR viewer.