Fools and their money...
I have absolutely no desire to have an iPhone (or any other smartphone, for that matter).
Apple will be very happy to have your 1000 «national-currency».
Apple fanbois being fanbois, Apple's new iPhone X isn’t "super expensive" but rather "totally worth it". Or, as chief executive Tim Cook styled it, "a value price... for the technology you’re getting". Indeed, some have gone so far as to compare the iPhone’s bloated price tag to overpriced coffee, arguing to this coddled …
“Fools and their money” - it seems to me that the biggest fools are those who religiously say “I’ll never buy a… (Microsoft / Google / Apple / Amazon - insert product of choice here)” rather than considering the merits of the product itself and whether it fills a need at a particular time. Similarly, a fool might fixate on the size of the price ticket without considering whether it represents good value for money. There’s no doubt that £1k is an awfully large sum - but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a product so priced is bad value.
A famous motoring journalist once waxed lyrical about the qualities of a motor car made by brand X (no, I’m not saying which one - if you read the article too then you’ll know who), describing it as better built, more comfortable and more refined than a Rolls Royce. He then fixated on the price and said that he wasn’t prepared to spend 80K on a car made by brand X. If his review was accurate (and I haven’t tried the product in question because I don’t have 80k) then he’s a fool because, by any measure, an 80k car which outperforms a Roller is staggeringly good value. He’s fixated on the badge and not on the product.
Of course, not buying the product because you don’t have the necessary funds (80k, 1k - or even a tenner) is another matter entirely. But that has nothing to do with the badge.
@inmypjs
Whether or not you are a fool, that is a very foolish statement - and one that betrays you as a member of, at the very least, the cult of “anything but Apple”. It is foolish for two reasons:
1.) Because if you had a genuine interest in the whole glorious spectrum of digital information technology and computing you wouldn’t need anyone to tell you what represents good value. You’d read about it, and go out and play with it.
2.) Your use-case differs from mine and therefore what you consider to be “good value” is likely to differ, perhaps markedly, from what someone else considers to be good value.
For my use-case the iPhone SE represents excellent value for money, as does the base model iPad. Equally, much as I like macOS, the Mac doesn’t make a compelling case for itself right now - certainly not one good enough for me to consider replacing my seven year old computer.
"that is a very foolish statement"
Really? You never heard of the Cupertino idiot tax?
Apple products command a large premium for the name.
Apple products can only be good value to people to who attach a lot of value to the name. I suggest that makes they and not I the foolish ones.
@ 45 RPM
I think the point is, is ANY smartphone worth £1000, (or $1000) or whatever, and although value is obviously perceived, I think regardless of what you can afford the question would have to be exactly that, and I think the reality is most people don't think so simply becuase you can buy something that is just as good or better for considerably less. Yes, you could argue that the specs say it outperforms anything else but it doesn't make any difference in real world use.
I think cards are slightly different because they all very considerably in terms of quality and abilities, but for the most part you can do everything you need with a decent quality smartphone that costs under £300. You won't get twice as much (or more) by spending double or treble that.
Sticking with the Mark Twain analogy: if Tom Sawyer had been an Apple branding consultant then the brush would have been rebranded as an 'iBrush' and the whitewash would come in as an extortionate 'Must Have Accessory'.
I presume with ARKit that by now Apple employees are getting used to seeing a VR Steve Jobs walking round shaking his head and crying in disbelief at the one-horse monstrosity that his (and Woz's) child has become.
"I have absolutely no desire to have an iPhone (or any other smartphone, for that matter)."
And there's no point picking those grapes that are too high for you to reach because they are sour.
Phaedrus recounted a pithy summary of "The Fox and the Grapes".
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves.
I beg to disagree, to me that sour grapes analogy appears totally inadequate. I perceive the iphone more as an accessory for fashionistas than anything else. Sometimes I suspect that most of those fashionistas are not even real fashionistas, quite often they look more like fashionista wannabes or something of that sort, I am not totally sure what they really are.
Come on guys cool down it's just a stupid gadget but you are dealing with it as if it was some kind of deity, don't make my observations a personal matter to you. Apple does not care about you as little as 1/1000th as you seem to care about them. You're blowing things out of proportion.
> It has never occurred to me to apply Aesops Fables to computing.
The book Escher Bach and Godel uses Aesop-like fables as an introduction to each chapter about information theory, though the author gives the nod to logician Charles Dodgson - better known to us as Lewis Carroll for his stories containing strange talking animals.
Agree completely el kabong. Its just a phone.
My reasons for never touching an apple thing ever again started in about 2003 (give or take a couple of years). I wanted to watch a quicktime video so downloaded the quicktime player from Apple which cunningly forced on me iTunes. I hadn't asked for that. Didn't want it. My MP3 collection was carefully curated. Suddenly Apple wanted to take over - and did a bit of damage to my metadata.
F_ckers. It wasn't straight forward to uninstall either. Like those search bars that just won't go away and have to be hacked out of the registry. I'm still pissed off about it now. They can go screw if they ever think they will get a single pence from me.
@lotaresco you know what assuming makes of "u", right? There's quite literally no amount of money _paid to me_ that would convince me to use an iPhone, or any other Apple product; if his case is anything like mine, it has nothing to do with "sour grapes" - and yes, quoting Aesop does make you something, but "look smart" isn't it.
"People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves"
So the starving wolf was morally incorrect for making themselves feel better about being excluded from a meal? Where is the giraffe in this story that fed the wolf the grapes rather than forcing it, in desperation, to eat little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother?
Just another example of "I am alright Jack" until you get eaten by a starving wolf pack and then complain how immoral the world is. You made it dog eat dog so only you could have the grapes and as ever with exclusion there is a hidden cost you are going to pay once the supply of Grandmothers runs out.
Jeffrey Nonken» "I have absolutely no desire to have an iPhone (or any other smartphone, for that matter)."
Uh, good for you. Your point?
No point really, it is primarily a statement.
I am of the opinion, though, that spending $1000 on the new handset is foolish.
But then again, I lavish attention on my Mac IIfx, which many would consider to be foolish. So, who am I to judge what people spend their money on?
Well it's Monday, so your Pixel's screen will be completely burnt in and unreadable, but that won't matter because the phone will be unusable due to Russian hackers running fake news bots on your phone right now having lightly stepped pasts Android's crappy security.
I'm sure that there will be some former Google Glass enthusiasts keen to revisit AR, but I'm really struggling to see any real world utility for myself and 99% of the rest of the population from this technology, certainly in the next forty years.
Augmented reality, like virtual reality is the latest version of 3D. That didn't catch on, I predict that other than a few niche applications (Pokemon Go........) this will all go the same way, driven by shiney-eyed tech evangelists, who are all competing with each other to develop something because they can, rather than because it confers any real world benefit.
The whole thrust is that it doesn't matter if you see the point or not: it'll come to enough handsets that maybe some app developer will find a killer use-case that you've over looked.
It's more akin to having GPS on a phone than a 3D television. Whilst it was immediately clear that live navigation would be quite useful, it was harder to foresee what it would enable - Uber and taxi driver protests.
Have a look at the history of internet use by demographic, sector, gender etc, have a think about online retail, and ponder how a 3D scanning environment-aware phone might plug into that.
It's not just Apple - Qualcomm are touting similar sensors and co-processors for release early next year.
@Ledswinger
AR doesn't usually equate to wearing goggles a la Google Glass - which I agree would be a barrier to use in social situations.
It can be more akin to Google's Translation app (where you hold your phone over French text and see the English translation on the screen in context) or the Night Sky app. Like that, but for 3D physical environments and objects.
AR can become a replacement for a measuring tape for the casual user, in the same way as surveyors now use laser distance finders instead of sticks. Useful stuff, not gimmicks.
There are already at least 2 killer apps for AR: training and remote assistance.
Training as in learning anatomy or a highly complex 3D object (plane motor).
Remote assistance (computer based or human based).
As in where does a part has to be mounted in a complex system and such. Microsoft had quite a great video during its innovation conference in France, where it showed one of its customers doing exactly that. Can't remember exactly what it was, but it was pretty impressive, such a part to install on a submarine.
In addition to helping the technician do its job, he could superimpose other 'layers' of information.
In the example, he added the electric wiring scheme, and could see that the electricity team made a mistake and there was no chance the wirings could go between the wall and the piece.
In all the examples, HoloLens or glasses were used.
I see much less use for the phone form factor, except for what doesn't need to be super precise, such as trying to fit a sofa in a living room.
Aside from use locally, i.e. CAD/CAM/CAxE (x is some engineering discipline), just allowing this field engineer to not have to climb into a vehicle, be it plane or truck, to work with technicians on-site is something worthwhile. Even better, this engineer who's now mostly a shut-in can actually work from home, sitting up or in laying in bed.
That represents real value, well over $1000, basically extending/adding new capabilities and I just happen to get a phone besides. I've not bought into Apple, yet, although I recommend them regularly to the clueless amongst my userbase. Personally and professionally this is fucking huge. Also saves me money.
”I was laughing my arse off when those bunch of morons were camping at parks and playing Pokemon Go a couple of years ago.“
Gosh, it must be amazing being as achingly cool as you were. How dare those other people have fun doing something that’s so obviously beneath you.
Twat.
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/11/13/apple_leads_on_augmented_reality/
And as I said over there, while AR has a number of niche use-cases, it does not have a general use-case. Certainly not one which is compelling enough to make people slap a pair of goggles on.
(Mind you, it makes for a mighty fine gimmick - at an arena gig last night, I was genuinely impressed last night by how many people were taking snapchat-enhanced selfies. Therein lies at least one money-making route, it would seem...)
AR doesn't require googles. For many use cases it's sufficient to look through the phone screen. A current example would be Google's translation app - if you hold the phone above some French text the phone will display an English translation in context. Another example is the Night Sky app, which identifies constellations and planets from your point of view (location, direction)
Wow, live translation of text via the camera from Google.
Jesus, my first Windows Phone had that, 4 years ago, and all of them since.
Why is it that people only think that something is clever and cool when Google or Apple do it, despite it being available from a non-sexy Vendor yonks before.
Next thing you know, Google maps showing the Highway camera live feeds on Android will be touted as awesome, despite being on my Maps app for ages already.
My Nokia N9 had AR location placesdistance placed over the camera feed even longer ago than that - including stuff that you couldn't actually see. It doesn't tend to survive because it just isn't that useful in real life (partly because compass/gyro stuff is not perfect I suspect).
And, I presume when Firefox/Chrome adds the facility for web pages to be displayed in English without tiresome clicking and mucking about and copying bits into a translator, or has a right click that allows just a marked bit of text to be translated, it will be considered cool too. Meanwhile, I will just use Edge and half-forget that some of the pages I read are in a foreign language (until it becomes obvious from the translation that is).
Reminds of the time that someone said their camera had OIS, two years after my first camera that had it. Or the first time that boasted about having a whole 12MP when the one I was holding had 40.
And someone really was amazed when they put their phone on my wireless charging pad and saw it charge, THIS WEEK at my office, really, THIS WEEK. (Yes, it was a web developer.)
Thanks FIA. Perhaps it wasn't clear to @cambsukguy that I was only using Google Translate or Night Sky as an example of an existing environment-aware* app that readers here might already be familiar with. An example merely to illustrate how a screen-based AR app can be used without specialist eyewear. That's it. No more, no less.
Whoever was first to create such a system is a moot point. (Just as moot as me pointing out that I'm not going use an app as an example if its platform has such little market share that most readers won't have encountered it. Even if I do like some aspects of WinPho UI :))
*Obviously 'environment aware' in a limited way. Translation apps just deal with a 2D image, night sky apps just location, attitude (gyro) and direction (compass).
"Wow, live translation of text via the camera from Google.
"Jesus, my first Windows Phone had that, 4 years ago, and all of them since."
<shrug> The first live translation of text app that I used was Word Lens on my iPhone 4 in 2011. I doubt that was the first such app either. If you're going to wave your willy, make sure that it's not a tiny shrivelled one. BTW you do know that even M$ has admitted that Windows Phone was a bad idea, badly executed, don't you?
"AR doesn't require googles." Indeed, we have as you said, Google Translate, plus Google Goggles to identify things (oddly named considering it doesn't require Goggles) Google Cardboard is the goggles.
I presume Apple will come up with some sort of headgear though, because there is a great gaming opportunity there. Will they come up with some novel controller as well though?
> I presume Apple will come up with some sort of headgear though, because there is a great gaming opportunity there. Will they come up with some novel controller as well though?
Apple historically haven't jump ed at gaming opportunities. I mean, they've never even bothered making physical gamepad reference-design for iPhones in an effort to eat Nintendo's lunch.
On the desktop computer side, catering to gamers doesn't play to Apple's strengths as games favour commodity hardware to drive up frame rates and drive down latency. Those Mac users I know who game just do it on a PlayStation on a big TV.
There was that time Steve Jobs introduced Halo, but Microsoft bought the game studio before it was released on Mac to make it an XBOX exclusive.
"Apple historically haven't jumped at gaming opportunities."
I think it still pains Apple that in the 1980s Microsoft, IBM and Harvard Business School dismissed the Macintosh as "a games machine". That said I have a soft spot for some of the games that did appear on the Mac in the early days, things like Myst, Prince of Persia and the many good titles available from Ambrosia. I can run most of those on my phone these days.
I'm looking forward to the day AR is a thing you can have without attracting weird looks. And I'm not talking about looking at your phone which happens to display what's behind it with an overlay; I'm thinking of having transparent glasses which act as heads-up displays. I think that there are a lot of very interesting and useful applications, people just need to get used to the idea first.
In a workshop, safety goggles are already worn, so there's no extra discomfort in donning eyewear. Also, it's your damned workshop, so there's no privacy concerns to the public if you're wearing a head-mounted camera. Being able to measure dimensions on your workpiece on the fly, hands-free, whilst working with a CNC router work really ease the workflow. Plus, tape measures are a bugger for hiding, and I don't like having metal rulers near spinning blades.
However, goggles would be for niche use cases - this article is about placing environment-aware tech into millions of phones with initial indifference of most of the end users. Of course the sensor and silicon tech in phones and goggles has much in common.
When I've used CNC machines I've had to design on one computer and initiate the job from a dedicated control computer. There's scope for streamlining the whole process. It would be akin to the ease with which we can now send a photograph of something to a colleague on the spot with only a few taps, compared to the faff of only a dozen years ago where we would have return to a PC after taking a pic and swap the SD card over.
Heck, it would be bloody handy for the CNC router to have machine vision, so it can detect (and correct) if it's strayed from its zeroes or has broken its bit. There's already 3D printers which do this.
"It'd be a brave man who asks his wife if he can don some goggles in the marital bed to make her look like a pron starlet."
Lawer: You are seeking a divorce.
Wife: Yes, on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour. My husband wore AR goggles for sex.
L: And you object to him choosing to replace you with some other woman's avatar?
W: He was using Nigel Farage's avatar!
Apart from the (reasonable) flash in the pan that was Pokomon Go is there really much of demand for AR (or even VR really).
I suspect this is a manufacturer driven hype bubble to sell people a 'must have' feature that really they don't particularly give a shit about.
Smells a lot like the way 3D tvs were say 5yr ago. We were told it was a must have feature. Some people bought into it, many didn't and even those that did didn't bother with it much after the first few attempts.
Even 3D at the cinema isn't doing all that well and hasn't for some time.
It rather depends on what you're watching. I have a TV which had 3D, almost as an afterthought. It wasn't hyped up, it was just there, along with the HDMI ports, the coax port, the VGI port, and the USB ports. They didn't make a big deal out of any of them, except to point out that there were three HMDI ports, and even that was subdued. I occasionally watch 3D content on the TV. Certain movies simply look better in 3D; the last few minutes of Rogue One, for example, with Anakin Skywalker slaughtering rebs left and right, is pretty good in 2D but is magnificent in 3D.
> I suspect this is a manufacturer driven hype bubble to sell people a 'must have' feature that really they don't particularly give a shit about.
You missed the point of the article then, which was that Apple is getting the kit to the streets WITHOUT a hype bubble. The hype will come AFTER the killer apps have been developed.
I rarely order clothes online (hate the returns) - but for some people, that Amazon buy button is apparently the equivalent of the daily prayer for a monk.
So, some retailer will have it (virtually "trying" on clothes) soon-ish and all other will quickly follow.
There are already apps for make-up, so you can superimpose different "styles".
Needless to say, I don't need that. But it's IMO a no-brainer to understand that there is a market for this. And that's just the beginning. The iPhone hardware is so powerful, the possibilities are limitless, almost.
Absolutely. If one is trying to understand how a technology will change the market as a whole, it is blinkered to the point of cretinous to only look at ones own individual behaviour.
I was once told by an associate of Felix Dennis that he became so rich because he would know what people wanted before they did. It mirrors Henry Ford's observation that if he asked people what they wanted, they would ask for a faster horse. Sony traditionally don't use focus groups, and nor do Apple.
The Cupertino purveyor of overpriced 'tat' may have stumbled onto 'the next big thing' in AR.
Their approach is certainly different to Google Glass and as the article says, you have all the kit you need with you in the phone.
The nay-sayers here won't have any of it though. "Everything Apple sells is shite and I would not be seen dead using it" seems to be their mantra.
Oh well, only time will tell who is right.
Personally, AR and me? Nah, I prefer 35mm film and writing things down on dead tree things.
Yours
A Grumpy Old Man
The *other* Google effort in this realm is their Project Tango, but it's only available on two consumer phones - not nearly enough to excite 3rd party developers, which is the point this article is making. It uses two cameras to create a 3D depth map of a room, and the reviews suggest it taxes the phone's RAM. It does produce proper point-clouds though.
The *other other* Google effort is ARCore, which uses software on data from a single camera. As such it can in theory run on any phone with enough processing grunt. There are limits to what a single camera can do, though one assumes this system takes advantage of the fact that people don't hold their phones stationary.
And whilst not a a Google effort per se, Qualcomm (whose SoCs already power a lot of Android phones) are pushing both a passive and an active IR scanning chip/sensor package to Android OEMs for release next year. Their demo shows a real-time moving 3D scan of a pianist's hands and piano keys.
I don't think it's a case of most people thinking it's shite, it's the fact that Apple introduce most "features" after everybody else, give them a different name then charge considerably more for it all than everybody else does that annoys most people.
If customers want to spend that sort of money then fine, but they need to stop trying to tell everybody else that they're buying into a vastly superior product.
Augmented reality, facial recognition, interconnectivity of social networks etc. in one pocket device is all leading towards the day you can thumb down or thumb up real people and those numbers get stored on a public server for everyone to see just by pointing their smartphone at someone.
Much like last year's Black Mirror episode 1 of season 3 "Nosedive", and recently The Orville episode 7 of season 1 "Majority Rule", where lives can be directly & instantly ruined or elevated to fame & fortune by the entire populace pressing their like/dislike buttons.
Yeah the future's gonna be great...
It won't be fully useful for AR until there are additional sensors on the BACK of the phone, that way it can dynamically 3D map the room you are in. There will be an explosion of AR apps, most of which will be games or the AR equivalent of a fart app. But a few will be very useful, and justify its existence.
The same people who are saying AR is useless on a phone probably said the same thing about a camera, because they hardly ever used a camera and if they did they'd only use one that took decent pictures not the crappy ones cell phones first came with. They probably said the same thing about GPS, because they knew where they were going or used paper maps like their dads did.
It's been rumoured already:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-14/apple-is-said-to-target-rear-facing-3-d-sensor-for-2019-iphone
Apparently they've looking at using a time-of-flight laser system, as opposed to their current distorted IR grid method.
Qualcomm's IR sensors -being touted at Android OEMs - are intended to be mounted on the rear of phones.
We'll see.
From where I sit, AR looks like 3D all over again. Outside of specialty things like industrial use and gaming, it's hard to come up with an application that would transform it into something people use more than rarely or out of curiosity.
The number of developers working on it is irrelevant, except that having more developers increases the chances that someone might come up with some sort of "everyday use case" for the average person. The chance seems incredibly tiny under the best of circumstances, but I fully acknowledge that I may simply lack the visionary imagination to see what real value the average person would derive from it.
There's nothing wrong with an honest acknowledgement that one can't see a 'killer app'. And hey, if you did, would you be daft enough to post your online? :)
I might suggest that there's no one killer app for the current near-ubiquitous touch screen smartphone.... but the smartphone does lots of things well enough. From an alarm clock to a podcast player, a camera and a flashlight, an atlas and a calculator. Whose to say that more environment-aware phones won't follow this same 'lots of little things' pattern?
Me, I have a hunch that online retail and the DIY markets will both benefit. But that's just my speculation.
Regards
"Whose to say that more environment-aware phones won't follow this same 'lots of little things' pattern?"
It's possible, but seems unlikely to me. I've had a few very good AR apps on my phone for years now, and after an initial period of using them because they are cool, I stopped. The reason I stopped was because they did "little" things such as you describe. That they were little things meant that in the long run, it ended up being more trouble than it was worth to pull the phone out to do them.
"Apple fanbois being fanbois"
"And yet... these apologists for Apple..."
You obviously have a HUGE chip on your shoulder regarding Apple, its products, and its users.
If you were talking about people who spend more to buy a BMW instead of a Kia, I greatly doubt that you would be calling BMW buyers "fanbois" and "apologists" because they spent more money on a higher end product with higher quality and better user experience than they would get with a Kia.
In only a few weeks Apple has sold an estimated 15 million iPhone X, and projections are for close to 100 million to be sold in the year. That is a lot of people for you to denigrate, and for you to irrationally consider to be mindless fans of a new product.
As with high end cars like BMW, high end smartphones (like the iPhone X or Note 8) are more expensive because they offer more, and are much more expensive to produce than low-end phones.
So why are so many millions of people spending so much for the iPhone X?
Here are a few of the unique selling points:
- The iPhone X has the fastest (by far!) CPU and GPU Geekbench benchmarks than ANY other smartphone (even faster than many laptops)
- The iPhone X has the first 3D face scanning system using infrared projectors and scanners
- The iPhone X has been rated the best photo camera of ANY smartphone by DxOMark
- DisplayMate tests revealed "The iPhone X is the most innovative and high performance Smartphone display that we have ever tested."
- The iPhone X is the first smartphone with a top to bottom display giving a large display phone in a small package
- The iPhone X is built for Augmented Reality, and because there are thousands of different AR apps available for it
- The iPhone X's both rear cameras (wide angle and telephoto) have optical image stabilization and fast lenses
- The iPhone X can shoot photos with various Portrait Lighting modes
- The iPhone X offers privacy and security since, unlike Google, Apple doesn't make its billions of dollars invading your privacy and selling your personal data.
- The iPhone X provides owners with the best user experience (best support, instant operating system updates for years, best resale value, etc.)
Not everyone wants (or can afford) to buy high end products, but those who do, don't make their purchases blindly. And often, people who do not understand this, or who are envious of those who can afford high end products, tend to insult those purchasers in order to sooth their own "hurt" egos.
I agree that it's irrational to dismiss people who like iPhones just because you don't like them. That said, this made me think:
"If you were talking about people who spend more to buy a BMW instead of a Kia, I greatly doubt that you would be calling BMW buyers "fanbois""
Historically, I've thought of BMW owners in exactly this way for most of my life, and your statement made me question why. The answer is because every BMW owner I've known has owned one because of the social statement it makes rather than because of some sort of technical superiority. In other words, in my experience, people own BMWs for reasons that are only tangentially related to the car. In that sense, they are rather similar to an awful lot of iPhone owners.
Even so, I'll never say those people are wrong in their preference. Personal preferences are just that, after all, and the fact that something that is important to them is not important to me doesn't make them (or me) incorrect.
”The answer is because every BMW owner I've known has owned one because of the social statement it makes rather than because of some sort of technical superiority.“
The one car I truly covet is the 2012 BMW 335i Convertible; fully loaded, in white. This, to me, is my dream car. If I ever find myself in the position of owning one, I will be a BMW owner who drives a BMW because I think it’s an aesthetically beautiful, well engineered machine that makes me feel alive when I’m behind the wheel. Couldn’t give a shit about the ‘social statement’ or other people’s opinions.
There are probably other BMW owners out there who feel like this. Just saying.
I've got a 2015 BMW 335d because it's a brutal bit of kit and at the time of purchase no one else made 300hp+ diesel which could be had for similar money. It was a USP. If Merc or Audi (or Kia) did a similar or better car for the same money I would have bought that.
And I've got an iPhone too. But an SE, and I'm not a fanboi. I liked my Windows Phone better but it didn't work with anything.
"Apple's genius with the iPhone X may be in launching a device that, as it did with apps before"
There was nothing genius about iPhone apps. Palm and Microsoft had been doing it for years before. Apple just made it more mainstream because they have a very good marketing dept.
As for the VR platform. One could say the exact same things for Samsung and Google with their VR platforms. Huge user base, been out for a few years now and still no compelling reason to have it other than curiosity.
Like Sammy and Google, Apple is just searching for relevance in an overcrowded market.
Google struggle to get their more recent Android versions out to users. Even the OnePlus phone reviewed on the Reg today isn't running the latest Android version yet. Any new Android feature takes longer to get to a decent percentage of users phones.
Apple's competent marketing department has its work made easier by other decisions Apple make.
There's a huge potential for AR - maps, technical/schematic assistance, gaming, and new forms of telecommuting. Anyone who's tried to navigate Tokyo or repair a scientific/industrial machine knows that 2D diagrams aren't enough. You need at least 3D AR. Better yet, 3D AR with a human or digital assistant.
The problem is that nobody has the building blocks to efficiently create AR products yet - 3D data, physics models, optical location recognition, 3D contextual assistance, and the elusive user interface. There's nothing more than some demonstrations that were extremely labor intensive to build. A few real products might become available soon if you place barcode stickers on everything. The iPhone X may be AR ready to some degree but it's going to be obsolete before practical AR products are available.