New World Notes

Meta's Quest 3 Shifts Focus from VR to Tag After Apple's Mixed Reality Vision -- Despite Little Evidence of Mass Consumer Interest

The Meta Quest 3 is here, with a starting price of $499, and before I begin ranting, let me start with the positive: It's launching right out the gate compatible with Roblox (along with Quest 2 and Quest Pro), so it's immediately metaverse friendly. That's good! 

Now to rant -- or maybe "stand there, utterly confounded and amused " is a better way of putting it.

The Quest 3 launch reflects a complete shift by Meta, openly imitating Apple's Vision Pro launch from early this year. You can see that in the product trailer above, and it's heavy, near-complete focus on Mixed Reality experiences.  

Contrast with how Meta launched the Quest 2 in 2020:

Oculus Quest changed the game for wireless VR. It delivered fresh experiences for enthusiasts and new opportunities for developers, all while introducing immersive gaming to newcomers across the globe. Today, we’re excited to announce Oculus Quest 2, the next generation of all-in-one VR. Quest 2 pushes the state of VR forward with a redesigned all-in-one form factor, new Touch controllers and our highest-resolution display ever.

With Quest 3's marketing, VR is far less mentioned. Just read the announcement:

Immersive experiences like virtual reality can transport you to fantastical worlds that defy the laws of physics, but the physical world — and the connections you’ve made there — are pretty important, too. We believe you shouldn’t have to choose between them. That’s why Meta Quest 3 features breakthrough mixed reality that enables a spectrum of experiences.

This paragraph is actually the only time "virtual reality" is mentioned in the Quest 3 announcement.

Mentions of "mixed reality": FIVE.

On the one hand, this reflects the reality that the Quest 2's VR-forward approach has failed to gain mass market traction, with only 20 million or so units sold. Further, I wouldn't be surprised if this is partly an attempt to shift away from the nausea effects from full VR experiences that I mention in the book. 

On the other hand, small problem:

Watch: Philip Rosedale Interviews Metaverse Pioneer Avi Bar-Zeev on Helping Create Second Life Prims, Apple's VisionPro, and Much More

Philip Rosedale's latest vlogcast interview is with Avi Bar-Zeev, an XR/metaverse pioneer who's been doing this so long, he was working for a virtual world company in the 90s which Neal Stephenson used to visit shortly after Snow Crash came out -- when Stephenson first reportedly looked into creating the Metaverse himself. (At least that's what Avi remembers; more on that below.)

Since then, Avi helped create Second Life's prim-based creation system (a topic he discusses with Philip here), and eventually went on to do experience design work for Apple's VisionPro. As he tells Philip: 

"It's really good for a lot of certain applications but what Apple's throwing down the gauntlet with is saying this is the next user interface paradigm, and it's the one that's gonna displace the mouse and windows... It's not just about having more screen real estate. It's about having the content come off the screens. And so a lot of the toolkits they've shown make it easy for you to pop stuff out of 2d into 3d including personas." (Personas being what Apple calls "avatars").

In the interview Philip mentions an amazing user-creation demonstration of the power of prims -- watch that below, plus an excerpt of my chat with Avi from Making a Metaverse That Matters:

Meta's "Smart Glasses" Stepping Stone to AR Has Only Stepped Into Obscurity

Where it started for Meta (last February):

Ray-Ban Stories let you capture video and photos, share your life’s moments and listen to music or take calls hands-free... We see smart glasses as a stepping stone to true AR glasses, and an important element of this is building something you’ll want to wear regularly for extended periods of time.

How it's going for Meta (according to the WSJ this week):

Less than 10% of the Ray-Ban Stories purchased since the product’s launch in September 2021 are used actively by purchasers, according to a company document from February reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meta sold a total of 300,000 of the wearable devices through February, but the company only had about 27,000 monthly active users.

Emphasis mine, because wow. Normally people make a concerted effort to get their money's worth from a relatively expensive piece of hardware ($299+) but that's not even happening here. 

This is notable, because "XR glasses that are the size of sunglasses" has been a constant goal among enthusiasts for decades -- a topic I just chatted about with Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz:

Apple Vision Pro's High Price is Not a Problem Because It's a COMPUTER, not a Peripheral -- Jeff Yang

Before we close out this week of Apple Vision Pro, here's a really good point that's not being covered much (at all?) from my colleague and IFTF research head, Jeff Yang:

Still can’t get over how much people miss the point of Apple Vision Pro. It isn’t a peripheral like Quest. It’s a FULL COMPUTER. You don’t need any other device to use it—though it’s integrated with the Apple ecosystem.

$3500 for a COMPUTER isn’t outrageous.

Apple has built a mobile spatial computer that you could (supposedly) comfortably use for a full work day. To use their own (kind of cringey brand language), this is meant to be MacBook Air Nano -- but Pro Max.

None of this would be possible without massive AI advances, Apple’s huge investment in biometrics, screen optimization, sensor integration and custom chips, and yes, its single-minded emphasis on privacy.

These are all things that Meta has not pursued or prioritized, which is why Zuck doesn’t get what Apple is doing.

He's referring to Zuckerberg's first thoughts on the Vision Pro sent to Meta employees:

Vision Pro Developer Avi Bar-Zeev on Apple's Spatial Computing / Personas Model Vs. the Metaverse vs. Metaverse/Avatars Vision

Avi Bar-Zeev led Experience Prototyping for Vision Pro at Apple, where he was most recently a Senior Manager; he just shared some intriguing observations on Apple's Vision Pro reveal:

The word "Metaverse" didn't appear once in Apple's WWDC thus far. 3rd party apps may espouse that next-gen internet vision later. But I'd argue it's much better to start with smaller conversations, consensual, collaborative and co-present.

The word "Avatar" is thankfully going away. It's a cultural misappropriation implying some sort of god-hood for hidden people and throw-away status for the digital skin. "Personas" is much better, partly because it reminds us that these are real people and our interactions matter.

The most important term invoked was "Spatial Computing." The earliest reference I know of is from my former CEO, Robert Jacobson, Ph.D., and friends around 1992 in a company called WorldDesign. I have a slide that suggests we wanted to trademark it but never did. Does anyone have earlier references to update my chart?

Is there a better or more genuinely descriptive term that isn't already polluted with schemes and extrapolations? Yes, it's broad. The universe is spatial. People are spatial. Computing should be spatial too.

It is literally "the fusion of the digital world and the real one."

Is this the term we've been looking for?

This image (above) is from 1992/93. As far as I can tell, Robert Jacobson, Ph.D. (and friends) first used the term "Spatial Computing" in our startup Worldesign (never trademarked). Bob had been at the HIT Lab with Tom Furness prior and I wonder if anyone else had used it there?

Before anyone mints themselves a new "spatial computing expert," or accuses Apple of copying others who came before, keep in mind that some of us in the field have been trying to bring about these changes for at least 30 years.

As far back as 1968 (also the year I was born), there were two competing visions introduced in the same year: 2D windows+mice (from Englebart and company), and what Ivan Sutherland called "The Ultimate Display" (later termed "augmented reality" by Ronald Azuma).

The former ideas proved much easier to mass-adopt from the 90s to today, while the later has taken 50+ years to get right.

Avi, notably, was also a very early Second Life developer at Linden Lab, and as I write in Making a Metaverse That Matters, was literally in the room  where it happened -- that is, when the Metaverse started going from Neal Stephenson's science fiction vision to becoming a de facto product roadmap in the early 90s:

Apple VisionPro Reveal Features Metaverse Platform Rec Room as Playable App! Unity-Powered Roblox, VRChat, ZEPETO, Second Life, Etc. to Follow?

Screengrab via Rec Room's Shawn Whiting

Update, 4:00pm: Shawn tells me he can't comment beyond the tweet featuring Rec Room in the VisionPro menu, but then adds: "might be more tomorrow too :)"

While Apple VisionPro may not be primarily targeted at or architected for VR/virtual world/Metaverse usage, it may still become an interesting niche peripheral for them. It looks like Apple very much knows and is preparing for that -- evidenced by this intriguing screengrab from the WWDC reveal, showing VisionPro being used in the App Store's premium Apps and Games We Love section. (See above.)

Top selection among those apps, even above Zoom: Rec Room, the highly popular, multi-device metaverse platform. 

This is very likely no accident, especially when the VisionPro presentation is the most highly anticipated and carefully prepared in all technology. Even more intriguingly, the screen grab was first posted on Twitter... by Rec Room head Shawn Whiting! With a sunglasses emoji no less:

Apple VisionPro AR Headset Targets High-End Market With Heavy Focus on 2D Content & Displays -- Not the Metaverse

After being developed since at least 2015, Apple finally unveiled its AR headset, the VisionPro. As the "Pro" in the name suggests, it's very much targeting a niche of high-end enterprise power users, and is significantly pricier than rumors suggested, at $3499.

For me the big reveal is VisionPro has little or no VR capabilities -- instead, the overwhelming focus is on displaying photos, video, and audio in an AR space. Even the rumored ultra-realistic avatars are not really avatars per se, but volumetric models of the individual user, called a "persona". 

Relatedly, there's little or nothing in VisionPro that smacks of the Metaverse as it's properly defined -- no immersive shared virtual world, no highly customizable avatars, no virtual economy of user-generated, etc. But then that shouldn't be a surprise: Apple CEO Tim Cook has never been a booster of the Metaverse concept.

Some other standout notes from the WWDC reveal:

Apple Staff Unsure About Apple's XR Goggles: I've Heard Internal Dissent Too

There was a good if unsurprising story from the New York Times last weekend which helps explain why Apple is constantly rumored to be putting out an XR headset soon... only for us to then get subsequent reports that the release has once again been delayed.

As it turns out, there's quite a lot of internal dissent within Apple about whether the company should be involved in XR at all:

[As] the company prepares to introduce the headset in June, enthusiasm at Apple has given way to skepticism, said eight current and former employees, who requested anonymity because of Apple’s policies against speaking about future products. There are concerns about the device’s roughly $3,000 price [emph mine!], doubts about its utility and worries about its unproven market.

That dissension has been a surprising change inside a company where employees have built devices — from the iPod to the Apple Watch — with the single-mindedness of a moon mission.

Some employees have defected from the project because of their doubts about its potential, three people with knowledge of the moves said. Others have been fired over the lack of progress with some aspects of the headset, including its use of Apple’s Siri voice assistant, one person said.

I say "unsurprising" partly because we've been tracking Meta Quest headset sales for the last few years, and its sub-20 million install base is really a bad sign for a larger XR market. If Meta can only move 20M units on headsets selling under $500, why would Apple think they could do well selling an HMD that is 6x that price?

I'm also unsurprised there's reported dissent at Apple, because I've heard implicit objections around XR myself while preparing my book.

For instance, an insider at Apple I spoke to echoed dana boyd's concern that VR may be inherently biased to be difficult for females to use:

Apple Hiring Junior Engineer to Help Develop "a 3D Mixed-Reality World"

Intriguing new job opening from Apple for a AR/VR Network Engineer stating "In this role you will work closely with other developers and build tools and frameworks to enable connected experiences in a 3D mixed-reality world."

I found the job listing via this Bloomberg story which interprets it in the broadest way possible:

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.”

It's definitely interesting, but as with previous rumors of Apple about to go big on a mixed reality Metaverse and XR headsets, I'm still curbing my enthusiasm:

Watch: Shopify Experimenting With Mixed Reality, AI-Powered Fashion

AI is enabling some really magical experiences. 🪄

Originally planned to share this tomorrow, @sergeyglkn scooped us! 😜

Keep on eye on this space. It moves fast! 💨 pic.twitter.com/Of8PgJWZMM

— Russ Maschmeyer (@StrangeNative) September 19, 2022

This is a fun and impressive demo: Online e-commerce site Shopify prototyping AI image generation used in fashion. (Russ Maschmeyer is AR/VR head at the tech company.) It was created in collaboration with Sergey Galkin, who explains how it was made on his own Twitter thread: "The prototype was made in Snapchat Lens Studio + post-processed in Adobe After Effects. Images were generated by Dalle 2." 

They're demonstrating this for a real world clothing context, but the virtual world applications are even more obvious. (I mean how many wacky T-shirts does the average consumer really buy, versus new avatar outfits?) Being able to adjust the style, fit, and composition of the clothing item itself seems like the next obvious next step.