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Apple will fight a series of battles in a long war: the battle for your eyes. @jon_prosser @markgurman @Scobleizer
#AugmentedReality #AR #VR #MagicLeap #Apple https://shodu.net/apple-vs-oakley-winning-the-battle-vs-winning-the-war/
#AugmentedReality #AR #VR #MagicLeap #Apple https://shodu.net/apple-vs-oakley-winning-the-battle-vs-winning-the-war/
A response to yet another seminal post by @Scobleizer in which he positions Apple against Oakley /2 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-apple-glasses-judged-vs-oakley-robert-scoble/
TL;DR I agree with most of his points (although he knows way more than I do about how far along they might be with 'true AR' in Apple Glass) /3
Scoble is basically saying Apple can't let its customers down: that buying eye glasses is a super hard market, and companies like Oakley show how complex it is. That when you go to buy glasses, you've already been 'locked in' at the optometrist, that 'vision' is complex. /4
I don't just want glasses. I want glasses with protective coatings or progressive lenses, that work on the ski slope and while I'm driving. That won't break if I nap on top of them :) /5
And he's right. The end game here is for the glasses market NOT for "AR glasses". He has some amazing use cases for what glasses can do even if they DON'T show much "rich AR" content, using JUST a bit of LiDAR say and a dash of SIRI /6
This falls in with my view that they won't actually DO much AR. /7 https://shodu.net/apple-doesnt-care-about-augmented-reality-heres-why/
And my other view which is that we here on Twitter (and in 'tech land') keep talking about AR like it's a THING. Most consumers don't KNOW that they're DOING AR when they use a Snapchat filter. There will be NO killer app for AR /8 https://shodu.net/augmented-reality-and-the-killer-app-replayability-and-platforms/
The REAL battle here isn't for AR. It's for spatial computing: a planet-scale interface and operating system. The REAL world. The digital twin. It isn't AR, it's self-driving cars and the Kitty Hawk flying car. /9
But even if we're talking about AR we're talking here about PHYSICS. About what is IPD and what trade-offs do we need to make with the eye box? About how much light we allow in to our view and how it affects display brightness. /10
Now combine this with all of the issues your optometrist is looking for. Near and far-sighted, how and where you use your glasses, how thick the lens needs to be. /11
(Side note, the Prosser leak included the claim that Apple didn't SOLVE tinted glasses, which is super weird. AR display works better with tinted glasses. But it's an important insight for my next points) /12
All of this is to say that ANYONE entering the glass wearable market has a ton of trade-offs to consider. And that THOSE tradeoffs then need to recognize that Oakley won't just sit still, that the benchmark isn't just Oakley glasses /13
The benchmark is an end-to-end user experience. And Scoble is saying that Apple needs to solve this. And he's right/ BUT.... /14
It doesn't need to solve it all at once. When I think Apple I don't think BIG moments: the iPhone, the iPad, the Watch. I think of all of the incredibly incremental things they do. Their SUCCESS is their incrementalism. Their SUCCESS is what they do NOT do /15
All of those features pulled at the last minute before launch. The lessons learned from Maps and from that antenna gate thing. "Don't do it if it doesn't work perfectly, we can always get to it later" /16
And so in the end, Apple vs Oakley. But not necessarily right away. It's a LONG campaign. /17
If Prosser is right, for example, the $500 price point doesn't suggest REPLACING your current glasses. It represents supplementing them. /18
What I THINK Apple might do is take a much slower, patient approach. Gradually encroach on the glass industry in the same way they did Watch. They didn't tackle luxury right away, they waited. And so Glass might be the same: "this year we are proud to announce sports glasses" /19
"This year we're proud to launch our luxury line" etc. So while I don't differ with Robert, where I might differ is in timing. When does Apple "take on" Oakley? And remember, they're "taking on" not a pair of glasses but an entire user journey... /20
And an entire DAY of wearing glasses. And so MAYBE they don't launch Glass as all-day. Maybe they don't tackle the whole optometrist > glass journey. Maybe they incentivize optometrists at first. And only tackle in-store exams later. /21
Apple is incremental. And this will be a long campaign. This isn't a war for devices. It's a war for the most significant shift in computing since the mobile phone. Buckle up. If nothing else this is going to be a lot of bloody fun. /end
