> Apple’s famed industrial design team had cautioned patience, wanting to delay until a more lightweight version of AR glasses became technically feasible.
This is the actual problem.
A well executed AR "headset" has the potential to replace all consumer devices except high end desktop. I wonder if that scares manufacturers.
Could you share why you think this is true? I'm not disputing it, but I'm also not as certain as you are.
I have a hunch that manufacturers don't care one way or another. Manufacturers are going to manufacturer things as long as consumers are buying things.
Perhaps by manufacturers you meant "competitors" or "other hardware companies" - if so, I suspect they're less worried about AR in general disrupting traditional "computing hardware" models, and more concerned that it's Apple doing it.
Apple has flops, and Apple has wins, and Apple's competitors have frequently underestimated as much as they've overestimated Apple's ability to pull something off.
Personally: I don't have high expectations, as much as I'd love to see the idea itself succeed. $3K is just too much money for your typical consumer, even if the tech is some "whole new level" sort of experience for end users.
Perhaps if there are obvious "non-mainstream" uses (imagine industrial applications where an information rich, contextual OSD helps speed up processes or improve quality/yield, or medical uses that can overlay valuable info, etc), then maybe $3k makes sense.
The high price is only one issue. There's all the other stuff (well described in other comments) as well.
For small businesses and hobbyists it probably makes more sense to compute locally on a real workstation that can run the latest and greatest software without compromises.
For your typical consumer, or even remote worker, they can replace their phone and laptop with an AR device. Wearable computing that merges seamlessly with everyday "real world" experiences just seems to be so obviously the next step.
It would be a dream if all I had to ever carry around was a folding keyboard for "serious" work (in the pocket where the phone used to be), but otherwise hardly ever need to do so and interact with a lightweight pair of unfussy glasses using eye tracking, touch surfaces, motion sensors, etc. For many people this means no more screens of any kind anywhere cluttering up their life except for the ones continuously and unobtrusively projecting onto their eyeballs.
This is the actual problem.
A well executed AR "headset" has the potential to replace all consumer devices except high end desktop. I wonder if that scares manufacturers.