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'Apple Is Approaching Social On Vision Pro the Way Meta Should Have All Along' (roadtovr.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the social-by-default dept.
Apple is taking a different approach to social with its Vision Pro headset: making apps social right out of the box. This, according to Road to VR's Ben Lang, is what Meta should have done all along. Instead, it's pioneered a social experience on the Quest platform that involves "jumping through a fragmented landscape of different apps and different ways to actually get into the same space with your friends." From the report: Apple is taking a fundamentally different approach with Vision Pro by making social the expectation rather than the rule, and providing a common set of tools and guidelines for developers to build from in order to make social feel cohesive across the platform. Apple's vision isn't about creating a server full of a virtual strangers and user-generated experiences, but to make it easy to share the stuff you already like to do with the people you already know. This obviously leans into the company's rich ecosystem of existing apps -- and the social technologies the company has already battle-tested on its platforms.

SharePlay is the feature that's already present on iOS and MacOS devices that lets people watch, listen, and experience apps together through FaceTime. And on Vision Pro, Apple intends to use its SharePlay tech to make many of its own first-party apps -- like Apple TV, Apple Music, and Photos -- social right out of the box, and it expects developers to do so too. In the company's developer documentation, the company says it expects "most visionOS apps to support SharePlay." [...]

Perhaps most importantly, Apple is leaning on every user's existing personal friend graph (ie: the people you already text, call, or email), rather than trying to create a bespoke friends list that lives only inside Vision Pro. Rather than launching an app and then figuring out how to get your friends into it, with SharePlay Apple is focused on getting together with your friends first, then letting the group seamlessly move from one app to the next as you decide what you want to do.

Even apps that don't explicitly have multi-user experience built-in can be 'social' by default, by allowing one user to screen-share the app with others. Only the host will be able to interact with the content, but everyone else will be able to see and talk about it in real-time. It's the emphasis on 'social by default', 'things you already do', and 'people you already know' that will make social on Vision Pro feel completely different than what Meta is building on Quest with Horizon Worlds and its ecosystem of fragmented social apps.
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'Apple Is Approaching Social On Vision Pro the Way Meta Should Have All Along' More

'Apple Is Approaching Social On Vision Pro the Way Meta Should Have All Along'

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  • So they're buying the only social VR experiences worth a damn, VRChat and Rec Room?

    Oh, not that. They're making a floating iPad

  • Apple's Vision Pro (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @09:24PM (#63936001)

    The $3500 social network!

    • Re:Apple's Vision Pro (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @09:58PM (#63936039)
      Here at Apple we know you don't socialize with peasants.

    • Just like real life but more expensive

    • The $3500 social network!

      You seem to forget there are a LOT of people out there with disposable income, and dropping $3500 for a new toy isn't going to break the bank with them.

      Not everyone is a broke college student.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Holi ( 250190 )

        It's not that, it just becomes an incredibly small market and thus lacks any excitement from developers. So you get the few apps Apple has made for it and not much else for your $3500.

      • $3500 wouldn't break the bank for me, either - but there's not much about the Vision Pro that excites me at all.

        I guess we'll see just how big the overlap is between "has significant disposable income" and "interested enough in the Vision Pro to spend $3500" is. I'm betting it's pretty small, but time will tell.

  • All your friends are wealthy, right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @09:33PM (#63936013) Homepage

    Apple's vision isn't about creating a server full of a virtual strangers and user-generated experiences, but to make it easy to share the stuff you already like to do with the people you already know.

    Move over green text, now you can be excluded from virtual social interaction with your friends because you can't afford a $3.5k device.

    • Move over green text, now you can be excluded from virtual social interaction with your friends because you can't afford a $3.5k device.

      As I mentioned in another thread....$3500 isn't that much money to a LOT of people out there.

      There's a lot of us out there with disposable income, and we buy toys a few times a year....this isn't going to break the bank with everyone.

      This is the case quite often with early adopters of any genre.

      • You're right, some folks can afford a 3500 dollar toy. But, here's the important part, NOT ENOUGH people can afford this toy to reach the tipping point of where companies will invest money into the platform. Apple is so hosed with this turd bomb of a product it's not even funny. It's blatantly obvious. Painfully obvious... But like a lot of things in the world at the moment, what's perfectly obvious as objectively true is somehow completely missed by some folks.

        • You're right, some folks can afford a 3500 dollar toy. But, here's the important part, NOT ENOUGH people can afford this toy to reach the tipping point of where companies will invest money into the platform. Apple is so hosed with this turd bomb of a product it's not even funny. It's blatantly obvious. Painfully obvious... But like a lot of things in the world at the moment, what's perfectly obvious as objectively true is somehow completely missed by some folks.

          Maybe....maybe not.

          I'm thinking this is the

      • The typical US citizen can't afford a $500 surprise. So really, your $3500 is for a fairly exclusive group. Especially for a toy! Sure, some people will be into it. Not really any different then people that love going to the desert and have their dirt bikes, etc. or like owning a boat.

    • Move over green text, now you can be excluded from virtual social interaction with your friends because you can't afford a $3.5k device.

      Or just because you prefer a different operating system on your device. The "green bubble = poor person" has been a huge marketing win for Apple

    • Apple's vision isn't about creating a server full of a virtual strangers and user-generated experiences, but to make it easy to share the stuff you already like to do with the people you already know.

      Move over green text, now you can be excluded from virtual social interaction with your friends because you can't afford a $3.5k device.

      To be fair, one of the smart things about their approach is that these features work on their existing platforms. You can SharePlay to and from iPhone, iPad, and Mac. You can AirPlay from them as well. FaceTime and Messages too. And so on. Even if your friends don’t get one of these (and I certainly have no plans to), those who do get them will have the ability to enjoy their new toy without their friends or everyone in their family needing to do the same. It’s basically just another—alleg

    • Move over green text, now you can be excluded from virtual social interaction with your friends because you can't afford a $3.5k device.

      Don't worry, rich people don't hang out with poor people anyway.

      Shit, that even happened to me when I was a kid. There was one other boy my age in my neighborhood. But his parents were rich and mine were poor. They just drove him to other neighborhoods to hang out with other kids, while I had a single parent with no car.

      This isn't going to create divides, only deepen them.

  • "making social the expectation rather than the rule"? Wouldn't having it being "the rule", fulfill both sets of people? What a non-statement

  • At least someone is putting some thought into it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by presearch ( 214913 ) on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @10:26PM (#63936063)

    It'll get cheaper, drop that childish thread.

    Anyway, Meta treated their face hugger like a phone strapped to your face.
    It goes blank or into gridword whenever a new app runs.
    And their art direction is laughable. No taste, as they say.
    You're put in their dumb, ugly world instead of your world.

    What's insightful about Apple's approach is that the hardware is fungible,
    the face hugger can eventually shrink to minimal and the development that went before will still apply.

  • What does it mean? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:27AM (#63936209)
    This "article" is PR & marketing word-salad, e.g. What does, "...making social the expectation rather than the rule." mean? I bet it leaves you feeling visibly younger too. doubleplusgood!
    • If it's not a rule, it's optional and making it the "expectation" just sounds like it'll be opt-out instead of opt-in, so either they are simply saying they'll enable social stuff by default, but you can turn it off, or the "journalist" is just a clueless moron. Or both, really. I'd wager it's both.

    • It's likely code for "please give us preview devices".

    • There is a common phrase "the exception rather than the rule". Of course, the meaning of that phrase would be the exact opposite of what is meant here. Maybe the author tried to flip the meaning of the phrase by swapping out that word and wound up with something that just doesn't make sense, or maybe the author just screwed up. Sometimes people hear phrases wrong and never learn the correct version, and use them incorrectly (such as, for example "supposibly", "as a pose to." "I could care less," "the pro

  • The right approach - in theory (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @03:04AM (#63936295)

    In practice, I doubt Apple knows what it's getting into.

    Let's dive into the "social" aspect of VR. Better wear something you don't mind throwing away after we're done...

    When you take a look at the "social" side of VR, you'll quickly notice that this isn't something that "normal" people would be attracted to. Why? Well, on one side, they can already have that. Meet their friends in some public place or at home and hang out. The bar for that isn't THAT high. Friends tend to be somewhat local, i.e. with 30 minutes drive, tops, you're with them. And wherever that may be, it doesn't cost you a couple thousand bucks for a device that is unwieldy, requires you to first set it up for a few hours, tinker and toy with it to get it to work properly only to then see a pixelated version of your friend... or actually, some "Avatar" representation of them.

    I dare say, that's not what most people would consider a "social" experience. Sure, it beats not hanging out with your friends, but for most, the required level of interaction is already reached with some online chat feature and a video cam. Discord comes to mind. I can hear the other person, I can see them, that's it. VR would only take away from that experience since I can't see them (only their virtual representation) and I couldn't even eat and drink or have a smoke while hanging out.

    The target audience for VR Chat (and similar products) is one where having to buy ass-expensive equipment only to then not really see the other person doesn't matter.

    Actually, the target audience is one where that is not a bug but actually a feature. Something that is the wanted effect.

    Your target audience for social VR is a group that is willing to drop a load of money to wear something uncomfortable, possibly for hours, where they will sweat and feel sticky under that damn mask and don't mind that because they can show the world an unreal representation of themselves. So who is your target audience?

    I can only think of two groups: Furries and Anime Fans.

    Here you have people who already showed they are willing to drop thousands on their hobby and who do put up with wearing very uncomfortable gear just to look like their fantasy representation. Perfect. But aside of that?

    Now, let's ponder for a moment whether you want these groups as the target audience for your products. Hint: They are much, but "family friendly" and "advertiser compatible" isn't exactly what comes to mind. Also, as soon as you try to make your chat "family friendly", these groups are gone because they are not interested in that.

    Apple... have you thought this through?

    • The article is not using social in the meaning of social media. VRChat will be ported for pseudonomous interaction, they'll probably get a load of vision pros for free if they promise not to talk about it.

      • I'm not using social in the sense of social media either. It has nothing to do with social media. What VR Chat and the like are is a way for people to be kinda-sorta-social while at the same time being able to pretend to be something or someone else. Which limits the demographics to people who want to project a different appearance of themselves desperately enough to accept the associated hardship.

        That demographic isn't exactly compatible with Apple's air of being a brand for the stylish and beautiful. If y

        • If it's some third party app providing it, it hardly reflects on them.

          No one blames Apple for having a Facebook app on their store.

          • I was under the impression that the Vision Pro is Apple's brainchild?

            • I truly don't think you are remotely the target audience for this tech. Most of us are way to old for this.

              Maybe someone with teenagers can chime in and help me out here but I kind of get the impression that teenagers these days have as many online (never met IRL) friends as they do IRL friends. Since they already spend all their time staring at a screen (seriously, I've seen a bunch of them sitting at a table, all mashing keys on their phones, not talking to each other at the table, in public), this would

              • I kinda doubt teenagers have 4500 bucks to drop on a "toy". Because that's what parents are gonna consider this to be.

                Also, and I was quite surprised by that as well, VR isn't too popular with teenagers. Because, and you won't believe it, they feel like they're being shut out from the world with that VR glasses in front of their face, blocking out the rest of the world. Yes, the people who are glued to their 4-inch screens like it's their whole world don't want to use VR because it blocks out the world.

                Pers

                • Wow okay. That's definitely not what I would expect from the teens. I mean, blocking out the world? They already don't see the world as it is. They walk around like zombies on their phones...

                  Well, maybe it's a toy for people without kids and good jobs that are into tech toys. I mean, I still would love a Star Trek like holodeck VR solution. Of course I don't have an empty room that could be setup as a geofence to do this in but I could see maybe a business having such a space and renting you the VR equipmen

                  • Like I stated, the biggest appeal will likely be for people who would be willing to put up with the cost and burden of that tool for the sake of being someone else in a virtual environment. I do think that the biggest issue with this is not only the cost but also the effort required to use it. With phones and PCs, it's pretty much just whipping it out and playing with it. VR usually means that you have to move furniture, fiddle with the equipment to get it to work properly and hope you don't end up like the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

      " only to then see a pixelated version of your friend... or actually, some "Avatar" representation of them."

      And interact with them in real time. Is Zoom social to you? It must not be, considering what you are saying here. Thus one can conclude that you don't condsider *this* interaction, simply 1's and 0's (I see characters in ASCII representation sometimes) over a pixilated flat screen, where the voids of light represent the characters. I mean, how could *that* possibly be "Social"?

      So, what *are* you d

      • I'm here to discuss topics with people, hear their side of the story, argue over opinions and sometimes (with decreasing frequency, I have to say) read something insightful from someone who has more information about a subject and can provide additional details.

        Social, though, this is not. I frankly would even have to scroll up now so I can see who wrote the text I'm replying to now because, sorry to be so blunt, I don't care who makes a point, I care about the point made.

        Also, where do you get the idea I l

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

          >I'm here to discuss topics with people, hear their side of the story, argue over opinions and sometimes (with decreasing frequency, I have to say) read something insightful from someone who has more information about a subject and can provide additional details.
          >Social, though, this is not.

          Hmm. I guess we have different definitions of Social. I also don't believe you. You definitely know who you are replying to, even if you don't consciously recognize it. It's right there, one of the first things

          • I rarely read the name in the header message. To be blunt, I still have no idea who I reply to and I also don't care too much about it. There are a few people whose nickname I eventually managed to remember because I engaged repeatedly in conversations with them and I eventually got to recognize their writing style (and arguing style) but still, what really matters to me is the argument, not the arguer.

            About the suffering: Have you ever worn a fursuit? If not, picture a full body fur coat. Or a portable sau

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by garote ( 682822 )

              Yeah I dunno. I'm sure people got sick of holding a big bakelite phone up to the side of their head to hear a tinny voice on the other end, before all these fancy wireless headset gizmos and beam-forming speakers and high-data-rate digital encoding protocols came around.

              But they still did it. For hours. For days. Especially when teenagers got ahold of them. And it was obviously, clearly, socializing. And it was not in any way an attempt to obscure a persona, it was to project one, as much as one could

  • social, experiences, ecosystem, friend graph, bespoke, seamlessly... Bingo!

    I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and shit you a more meaningful slashvertisement.

  • Who wants this?
  • "making social the expectation rather than the rule" That's either a malpropism, a misquote or a too clever pun. I can't decide.

  • I will summarize, for those who abhor marketing-speak. Apple said:

    "We built an API for VR"

    You're welcome.

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