“Given the amount of money Apple is spending on research and development these days, it’s almost certainly working on something big. There are reports and rumors that Apple has started exploring and perhaps is even working on some sort of virtual reality experience,” Mike Murphy writes for Quartz. “But Apple works on a lot of things that aren’t about to hit the market—like a car—and if current consumer VR devices are anything to go by, it’s highly unlikely that Apple will be releasing a VR system anytime soon.”
“Virtual reality is simply too much of a hassle right now,” Murphy writes, “Even for all the supposed problems Apple has had recently with software design… the company would almost certainly never put its customers through the current process required to use VR.”
“Offering an underpowered headset, or updating its computer line to support a headset as powerful as a Vive or Rift don’t seem like options for Apple,” Murphy writes, “And it’s unlikely Apple will be able to produce a headset that’s significantly less fiddly to set up than its competitors’. Right now, VR is just as stodgy and user-unfriendly as those PCs in the old Mac ads.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: VR certainly needs a lot more work before it’s ready for primetime – meaning the time when Apple Inc. begins releasing VR products. Everything on the market now is just half-baked tomfoolery.
One reason VR is stuck using high end PCs is because that’s how they were programmed. Any Mac with its own graphics card (meaning not just the Intel graphics stuff) should be able to do reasonable VR. So don’t let Facebook/Oculus feed us BS about hardware requirements.
Meanwhile, if we want to play with VR on iOS with Google’s Cardboard app:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id987962261
Keep in mind that Apple released QuickTime VR to the public back in 1994. So don’t let any FUD mongers fool us that Apple hasn’t already ventured into VR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR
Obviously you have no idea what VR is? What is this shit? A file format? Where is the immersion?
I have no interest in playing semantics games or going over history today. You go do your own homework, then you’ll have a clue! That’s how it works. Just for you, let’s apply the phrase ‘Immersive VR’ but let’s NOT pretend it covers all VR.
Some university and corporate campus maps were produced using QTVR as walkthroughs for the purpose of new student and employee orientation. Also I seem to remember it being used to embed cutscenes in Myst, Killing Time, and other groundbreaking games. Meanwhile at the trade shows folks were stumbling around in those VR helmets that resembled WWII welders’ masks.
I did a studio tour working with Apple using QuickTime VR back in 1995. That was a lot of fun.
Ever since the 90s, VR has come and gone in waves. Each wave gets bigger than the previous, but I still think it’s going to be a long time before we see it taking off in a way that defines new product markets.
Yep. It was so cool at the time, the movie “The Matrix” made use of it in many scenes. Some of you may have heard of that movie.
I’m not sure Quicktime VR (on the level of Google’s Photospheres/Streetview) is what most people consider VR today (stereoscopic environment immersion). Especially with so many people familiar with First person perspective games.
That is correct because VR has advanced, however much, in twenty years. BUT, it’s all VR nonetheless. ‘Immersive VR” is one term for what we have today.
“Medicine” used to be blood-letting and enemas all day long. That’s changed a bit in the last few centuries. But it was medicine at the time.
I honestly don’t get what the issue is with Macs.
Here is a typical high end gaming machine:
Doghouse systems: http://www.doghousesystems.com/v/armor_tl.asp
Here is my iMac
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac17,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 32 GB
AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB
4 USB 3.0 ports
Oculus Requirements:
Video Card NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater.
CPU Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater.
Memory 8GB+ RAM.
Video Output Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output.
USB Ports 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port.
OS Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer.
Now from the way I look at it, my iMac specs meet or exceed the Oculus requirements at every point, including the GPU. The only reasons I can see that this is a problem is that most people won’t spend close to $4k on an iMac. This machine is built to order, so having the high end GPU is rare. And 2nd, as with all Apple stuff these days, there’s no way I’m going to be able to upgrade the GPU until Apple builds another machine with a higher end GPU.
Apple builds sealed machines, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not dropping another $4k because Oculus does an update that takes advantage of new GPUs. Whereas with a PC I can probably do that update for less than $500.
The MacPro features Workstation class FirePro graphics cards, which are designed for CAD and high end creative and modeling work. Even though they are very expensive, they fair poorly when compared to the normal gaming GPUs. This is why an iMac is a better gaming machine than a MacPro. So even if you spend $6000 or $9000 on your MacPro workstation, it won’t be great for gaming and VR.
And you can’t just go grab high end gaming cards and slap them into the MacPro. It’s also pretty much sealed.
So essentially the problem seems to be Apple’s penchant for building sealed machines from the high end down to the lowest. If there was a box that Apple supported, that was flexible with expansion, things might be different. Although I’m sure there are other issues as well. As I’ve previously mentioned, one time Mac gaming proponent Blizzard has shunned the Mac for their newest game (Overreach) claiming that they receive very little support from Apple, and that Apple’s graphics technology lags behind Windows.
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“…Blizzard has had a long history of supporting Mac gaming, so to hear during Blizzcon that Overwatch was only coming to Windows, PS4 and Xbox One on launch and that there were no current plans for a Mac version was surprising and disappointing. I put the question to game director Jeff Kaplan in our interview – why now, on their most anticipated game in years, does Blizzard drop Mac support?
I also asked Kaplan how he felt about the Overwatch beta backlash.
“It was a result of not having all the technological support we needed to make the game viable on Mac systems.” says Kaplan, referring to Apple’s policies with OSX. “We have a real love and dedication for Mac players, they’ve been extremely loyal to us and we love giving them Blizzard games.
“But when dealing with the PC, the Xbox One and the PS4 – all of which are extremely welcoming to the technological needs to run a next-generation shooter – in a lot of ways we felt left behind, that we weren’t given the support we needed to make a great product on the Mac.”
For those who might not be aware, graphics technology on OSX is pretty far behind – to the point that while the OS is more optimised for Mac hardware, dual-booting into Windows and running games on that is often a better solution. A Macbook which has no struggles whatsoever with a game in Windows can chug and require lowering settings while in OSX. At least that’s been my personal experience, and it just doesn’t have the driver support from Nvidia and AMD that Windows does…”
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Other than that, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG with Apple’s hardware.
So basically “VR” is just another branch of gaming, and as always, you don’t buy a Mac to game. You buy a console or a PC, preferably build a PC. And if you do buy a Mac, just boot it under Windows to game. Macs often run Windows better than Machines designed to run Windows.
Yikes! Um, let me see if I can respond to a few things:
And you can’t just go grab high end gaming cards and slap them into the MacPro. It’s also pretty much sealed.
One can ‘add’ piles of cards to a Mac Pro, but that requires hooking up card hubs via Thunderbolt 2, which is expensive and a sprawling PITA.
There is a line Apple crossed where they chose design over functionality. The Mac Pro is a revolutionary design that is a lovely accomplishment for Apple. But it does NOT adequately address the required functionality, as so many people here have pointed out. It’s not so much ‘Pro’ as it’s a lovely experiment released to users who are ‘Pro’ enough to use its features, but who don’t require more serious ‘Pro’ functionality. It’s soft of an anomaly, blahblahblah.
YES! If only Apple gave up and offered an upgradable box as required by serious Pros.
CODE: One of the big nasty things that Microsoft did was FORCE anyone writing for Windows to use Direct X programming. The concept was to screw over anyone using OpenGL, entirely censoring it on Windows. Proprietary code is the result. It does NOT translate to OpenGL.
This points out that many of the Mac graphics hardware complaints are bullshit. Obviously, Apple’s decision to *GAG* go with Intel graphics on so many of their machines was a TERRIBLE idea, aimed at low end users who can settle for ‘good enough’, which used to be a verboten term in the Mac community. Sick and sad, IMHO. But it did allow Apple to attain their personal holy grail of thin, sleek machines not dependent upon custom third party graphics cards, which also helped somewhat with pricing.
WINDOWS GAMES on Mac:
I play several 3D games on Windows on my Macs via Parallels. The big fat problem at the moment is that NO virtualization software provider offers ANY support for Direct X 11 or 12. I’ve addressed this directly with Parallels on repeated occasions and their only response is ‘wait and see’. That’s been their response of YEARS at this point, through three different revisions of Parallels. VMWare, same. VirtualBox, same. This problem is NOT about hardware as both of my Macs have supportable graphics cards. It’s about bothering to code the translators and having adequate resulting speed specifically because of the CODE.
Would I buy a Windows box to game? NO. Would I buy a Windows box for ANY reason? NO. But that’s my world. My young nephew is learning how to be a game designer. He requires a Windows box for that purpose. He and I can share and chat about cross-platform applications and tools. I can play some games with him that are also cross-platform, either directly on my Macs or in virtualization. But he’s into programming 3D games, so sad-to-say, he requires a Windows box for that in order to share with his friends and for maximum coding capability for the genre.
*phew* A few thoughts on the matter.
This sounds a bit like the doom & gloom warnings from a few years ago, that Apple was late to the wearable computer market, and that Google Glass was going to leave them in the dust. (We saw how that turned out.)
VR is getting a bigger push, but it is unclear if it has become easy enough to use to move from the high-end niche into the general public.
Google Apps without download is just another backdoor to spew advertising and gather your data. What developers want to give away all their apps for free? Also, with no oversight, the user is just inviting more viruses and worse into his computer.
Apple has been working on VR for a long time.. At Least 10 years that i am aware of… From job listings ..etc..
That said.. If apple can Allow itself to put out a half backed and not fully thought out product like the latest Apple TV……. Why not VR sys.. And keep it at the beta/hobby level for a while… Like they did with the Apple TV..till everything is ripe for mass market.
At least they will creat some buzz that way.,..rather than the present state of doldrums…
I do not think people are going to want to strap their phone to their face. Ever. I don’t mean the geeks. They do strange things and are willing to put up with kludge. I mean everyday people. The only way VR will be mass market is if they A) figure out how to do it without glasses or B) make any glasses light weight. I don’t think either is possible in the near-term.
Gee, I’m still kind of excited about “real” reality. VR just seems like one more reason to stay inside.
The VR of today, it’s much different then it was in the 80s. It’s CRAP!
The current wave of VR hype is premature, just like it was a decade or two ago. It will happen eventually and Apple will enter the market at the appropriate time. But the hardware needs more work, as was pointed out above. No worries and no reason to fight about it.
Once it makes a big enough wave in Video Games it will invade other aspects of computing. I mean that seriously – the only good demonstrations of VR so far have been in gaming and its a logical place for the tech to be perfected.
Facebook itself is virtual reality, I prefer the real world thanks.
Indeed! I actually wish the company would fold up shop and retire from business. Playing facebook is at its best a time waster and big data’s dream platform. I hate the company and all the things it does.
As far as websites are concerned, I think it’s one of the worst designs I’ve seen. It’s clunky and unintuitive.
This ‘VR’ business as it is been talked about today, it is absolutely no different than Google Glasses in most respects. The appeal is restricted strictly to the geeky crowd, and it will remain so for indefinite future, until someone figures out how to make it simple, intuitive, universally and broadly applicable to the ordinary population, and not look dorky on you. The last one is, at present, the biggest hurdle, it will be practically impossible to solve, and will be a deal-breaker, regardless of the possible coolness of the underlying technology.
Apple has known the underlying principles and technology of the VR for twenty years now (from its QuickTime VR). If we strip away the interface, the core of it is no different than what QTVR was providing on a PPC Mac running at 120MHz (with 16MB of RAM!). Apple undoubtedly has an engineer (or a few) tinkering with VR, but nobody in their sane mind is considering implementing it in anything that looks like Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard or equally dorky.
I will be surprised if the adoption rate of any commercial offering that implements VR (as we are currently talking about it) were any higher than Google Glasses at their peak. Definitely not as we know it today.
Don’t get me wrong; VR as a concept is certainly cool, and its immersion is quite powerful, but there simply aren’t any meaningful mainstream commercial applications for the current implementation of it. For a technology to gain widespread adoption, people must want to use it every day. There is no way in hell that ordinary people will be strapping a headgear to their forehead every day. Geeky guys, yes; ordinary men (and women!) — no way.
Oculus reports a million monthly Gear VR users. That’s already a whole lot more than Google Glass.
Technically, we don’t know how many Google Glass users there were (at its peak), but in all fairness, the estimates (which varied wildly) put the number well below one million. Let us not forget, though, Google Glass was never officially released; it was a limited-availability testing platform.
The whole point is, whether 300,000 or one million, this is a negligible number when it comes to mainstream adoption.
I sincerely doubt that this number can go to 20 million the way iPhone did.
If ever VR as the technology, and its mainstream implementation get to the point of working (and looking) non-geeky, I’m sure Apple will be there to deliver the solution. Not a minute before that. And today, we’re likely years away from that (if it every happens at all).
Samsung with the Gear VR and the S7 phones has made VR that is relatively easy to use. I agree it’s not up to Apple “It just works” standards yet, but riding a new Six Flags roller coaster in VR is immersive and exhilarating.
I think Apple will release a stand-alone VR product when it’s ready that won’t rely on a phone or computer. They have the mobile processors for it, but they need ultra high-res displays and compelling content.
Some commenters on previous threads seem to confuse VR with augmented reality. If you think VR is not worthy of Apple’s time, stop by a Best Buy store for a Gear VR demo.
Perhaps the only possible attack vector for the mainstream (relatively speaking) market is gaming. People who normally buy consoles and put them in their family rooms (with their 50″ UHD TVs) may be intrigued by this and if it is cheap enough, it may get the public reception similar to the Wii ten years ago.
As TheloniousMac said above, Apple never really cared much for gaming, so the likelihood of them pursuing VR from that angle is rather slim.