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Setting aside the existing pro video pipeline... it's for this reason that if I were Meta, I'd be terrified about what Apple does next, from the perspective of photorealistic capture for VR/AR applications.

Even if the next-gen Oculus had parity with Apple Vision Pro in how vividly they could display VR/AR content - and I doubt this is the case - only Apple (perhaps among any company in the world) can mirror that with a battle-tested supply pipeline for creating pro-level video capture equipment and for integrating those sensors into consumer devices at scale.

While I'd leave the branding to better minds than my own, I'm bullish about Apple's ability to make an "iPad Vision Pro" that has two cameras at eye distance apart as well as laser rangefinding. That would allow for binocular Apple Log capture, and with the advent of Gaussian splatting for point cloud rendering, and increasingly better generative AI for inferring colors/textures of occluded points in the point cloud, you could have professionally color-graded interactive scenes. All that's missing is better ergonomics for this workflow in DaVinci Resolve etc., and one imagines Apple's war chest could go a long way towards incentivizing this.

Apple products will be where high-quality VR content is created, proofed, and consumed. They're not rushing because nobody else has a hope of being close.



> Apple products will be where high-quality VR content is created, proofed, and consumed

Eh... I think this is a bit like claiming "Apple hardware will be where high-quality video games are created, proofed and consumed" in the 90s. You'd be right given the circumstantial evidence, but the industry doesn't really want to play ball. Besides AppleTV and Apple Arcade, I don't think Apple has a huge constituent of VR developers the same way they did for Apps. Simply building the infrastructure won't be enough.

And plus, I don't think your argument rules out a world where Vision Pro is used for recording and Quests are used for content consumption. Unless Apple intends to reinvent the wheel again for 3D video, nothing should stop it from being playable (or at least portable) on other platforms. For most people, the $3,000 price difference will probably not be worth the recording capabilities (especially if they already own an iPhone).

Anything could happen, I guess. Even if you're entirely right though, I don't think Content Creation will be the killer app you think it is. Games and video moves millions of units; productivity and capture are both unproven features poised to reprise Hololens' failure.




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