Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnBooty | Hacker News Reader

    Meta is going for the same exact play as Apple did with 
    smartphones, but with VR.

Kinda? Revenue-wise, yeah.

Appeal-wise... yeesh. Mobile phones and the internet were already very mainstream-popular before Apple launched the iPhone.

VR, not so much. The appeal is extremely niche, and there's really just no demand for it.

Geeks were excited about having computers in their pockets. Literally nobody I know is excited to strap a dorky piece of puke-inducing hardware onto their head outside of limited gaming uses.

View on HN

> Geeks were excited about having computers in their pockets. Literally nobody I know is excited to strap a dorky piece of puke-inducing hardware onto their head outside of limited gaming uses.

I'm getting flashbacks to everyone complaining about the lack of buttons on the original iPhone, and how bulky/heavy it was in comparison to the micro-phones of the era. And how it was less powerful than comparable PDAs of the era.

I guess we'll see how well this comment ages in the same time period.

Every successful technology has had legions of naysayers. Cars. Video games. Graphical operating systems. iPhones. Solid state drives. Electric cars.

But that's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about the lack of folks enthusiastic about VR. All of the technologies I just named also had a groundswell of excitement around them; people who saw the promise.

    I guess we'll see how well this comment ages in the same time period.

Sure, write it down.

I'm reminded of the "hype" around 3D movies and TVs about a decade ago. Remember how that was going to be the next big thing? 3D Blu-rays and stuff?

But you literally never heard people excited about that tech at ground level. From geeks to normies the reaction was a giant yawn. That's what this whole VR thing feels like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com