[bowsamic]

First generation Apple products are always pathfinding devices and they always suck in many ways. The first gen Apple Watch was borderline unusable. I understand people will be pessimistic about this but Apple does have a track record of greatly improving upon the initial experience, so we'll see what happens.

[kipchak]

I think t he difference may be how good the "bones" of the product are to build out on. The original iPhone for example didn't have 3rd party apps (outside Safari pages) or GPS/Navigation, Push Email or 3G that are now core smartphone features, but the experience of scrolling around and opening apps always worked well.

But if it was the reverse and iPhone was unpleasant to use and carry around for long periods of time due to it's physical properties like the vision arguably is, (at least as a "AR" device) I don't know if adding those features later would have saved it.

[causal]

That's true. 1, 2 and 4 I could see being solved with a few iterations. 3 ("it's not useful") I'm still struggling with. Apple hasn't really highlighted any use case that's better than the alternatives.

[bowsamic]

I didn't really understand the utility until I watched Casey Neistat's video of using it in public as a portable entertainment experience device. If it gets down to a lower pricepoint I can definitely imagine people using it on public transport and the like to watch netflix on their commute. People will definitely want to use it that way, because that's a totally novel use case. If it gets down to $1000 and is portable enough, you will see people using it extensively in public. I don't think Apple intend for that yet though.

[causal]

Yeah I agree - an immersive "sleep mask" where someone can lay back and enjoy some private experience while killing time is the use case neither Apple nor Meta seem to be fully embracing yet. Make it lighter, more discrete, easy to slip on and off- and people probably wouldn't be too embarrassed to jump in.

[kipchak]

I'm reminded a bit of the Sony HMZ-T1 and Glasstron. I think the trouble is Meta is interested in use cases that drive data generation and "social" experiences, and apple is looking for the next iPhone/app store versus what the tech is best suited to.