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Comment by hannahstrawbrry | Hacker News Reader

A lot of comments on this talking about how an AR/VR product would never make it but I think a lot of people fail to understand just how badly Apple failed to meet existing VR/AR developers where they are. Apple told us all to learn Swift and port our projects or pay thousands of dollars in Unity licensing costs to ship our existing projects to the new platform. Was incredibly heartbreaking to realize I simply can't afford the fees to put my XR projects in the App Store despite having iOS & XR experience and already being part of the developer program.

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This.

We're 2 years into it and one would expect they'd incentivize the hell out of making sure this niche device has all the gates wide open. You can't have a walled garden if it's just wall.

Where are all the fascinating weird experimental trippy spatial computing concepts that we were supposed to see emerge. Where are the drone interfaces, the medical simulation applications, the training paradigms. New forms of entertainment, I mean least they could do is ensure that one awesome AAA game Half-Life Alyx had been ported over for this thing.

Both can be true. The current form factor of VR headset is too cumbersome for daily use. And Apple being Apple, they made a beautiful Ferrari that has no wheels.

If it was a Ferrari it would at least be light. Considering how heavy it is, it's more like a Rolls Royce lol.

I believe most people would consider the Rolls to be a more comfortable ride compared to a Ferrari, what about a Countach? Awkward to get into and painful for anyone taller.

It's more like a hydrogen-powered ferrari. You can only fuel it in one state, and it's expensive.

Apple's approach has always been "You'll do as we say and thank us for it"

For starters, it's not even available where I live.

>"Apple failed to meet existing VR/AR developers where they are. Apple told us all to learn Swift and port our projects or pay thousands of dollars in Unity licensing costs to ship our existing projects to the new platform."

The thing is there's still no actual platform for AR, and Apple took probably the very best shot at giving us one. Your other options are Meta's pile of React garbage "Horizon OS", or Android... which is Android. Sure Steam is great on the PC, but it's been proven pretty conclusively at this point that tethered devices are a dead end for niche hobbyists. Like it or not, visionOS is by far the only viable platform moving forward after Daydream and Fuchsia were abandoned.

That's the sort of thinking that killed Kodiak and ibm and xerox. There's absolutely a better way to do this platform. Apple just cannot bring itself to make another mac. It has to be another iPhone.

More than the Android problem, Meta has shat the bed over and over again on their MDM solutions- it's really hard to sell any company on experimenting with headsets when there aren't good ways to manage them.

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