narrativity

BE A PAIN-IN-THE-ASS. davetrott.co.uk/2023/06/be-a-p…. .

"Zuckerberg is gonna sell shitloads of Quest 3.0's this Christmas because it is $500, not $3,500." I see this kind of claim all the time. Or a similar one "a Ferrari is better than a Toyota but a Toyota sells many more." I played a lot with pricing when working at a consumer electronics store for a decade and learned how people approach buying new things. Watching people buy more expensive cameras than cheaper ones, over and over, got me to study economics in college and talk with thousands over the years about how people buy things. For instance, I sold THOUSANDS of Nikon cameras because Nikon was, back then, the only camera that pro photo journalists used. So people would go to a football game, see that all the pros used Nikon, and so felt safe in buying that brand when they were getting a $300 point and shoot camera. Which gets to the point. People buy things on emotion. But with VR it gets deeper. Meta's device is perceived, rightfully or wrongfully, as a device for mostly video gamers. None of my family or friends has bought one. Even though they are fairly affordable. And I have tried. Many times. Are they gonna go buy one now just that Apple is out? No. Claiming that people will just buy because Apple has entered the market with a very expensive device just makes zero sense to me and demonstrates very little understanding of humans and how they buy things. You don't buy a new Toyota just because a high end vehicle added a feature, or, even brought a new experience to life (high end Teslas have video games, for instance, I seriously doubt that affects any Toyota purchase decision at all). It's interesting, I have a $12,000 TV in my home and even when I'm playing some content on it that is amazing everyone sits around looking at their phones. VR or AR devices compete with phones. That's the real competition. So, explain to me, why someone will put down their iPhone, spend $500 on a headset, and put that on instead of looking at their phone some more? I can, but I'm a nerd who has visited thousands of startups and talked to many many in R&D labs like @StanfordVR who are building for both phones and VR (Zuckerberg bought Oculus a month after he got a similar tour). My consumer research shows that that Tim Cook has not awakened a new consumer who, all of a sudden, wants a VR headset because Apple showed off an AR headset that has hyper sharp screens and great audio for, say, watching a movie. Apple hit a use case that Zuckerberg will not be able to go after for years. He can't get 5K screens for his devices and, even if he could, he already told you his vision is a low-cost device. I've tried watching a movie in the Quest, many times. It sucks compared to a real movie theater. Apple's device does not. So, if you want a device for watching movies you can't really consider a Quest. And that's before thinking through the rest of the proposition. Apple's device uses what people already use: 2D screens for doing their work or for entertainment in the evening. Apple's ecosystem lets you use all the computers and other devices with it to do things you already are doing. Zuckerberg's device? Has no native movie service, no native music service, no native fitness service, unless you count Supernatural, which isn't how most people exercise. So, convincing people they need a VR headset in their lives is extremely difficult. It'll be difficult for Apple too, but at least Apple's device is really great at doing 2D computing, something that Meta's device is not good at. People forget that an Apple customer often has a dozen devices in their homes from Apple, costing many thousands of dollars. Mine has a TV, three pairs of headphones, four Macintoshes, two phones, three tablets, etc. Once people learn one ecosystem there are many costs in trying to get them to switch to another one. Trying VR means picking up a new ecosystem and learning new skills. I once helped a customer at Microsoft simply drag an icon across the screen (it was very hard for this customer who called into its support lines). Not to mention, Zuckerberg has another problem. Walk into the Best Buy nearest Meta's headquarters. Ask for a demo of VR. You won't get one. So, exactly, how will people see Zuckerberg's headset? Try it out? See if it could work for their lives? They can't. So, how will sales go up this Christmas? I'm watching a large number of people, particularly inside the VR industry, for signs that Quest will be seen in a good light. Very very little excitement about the future of Meta's VR direction. Excitement is what sells product and gets people to emotionally buy in to even consider such a thing. Just having a cheap product isn't enough. And we haven't even gotten to the reason why developers support iPhone first (even recently when Clubhouse came out it was iPhone only for the first few months). I know it pisses people off when I tell them the poor NEVER drive technology adoption. But it is the truth. For many reasons. If you have a different point of view, great, but we'll see who is right next April. I guarantee there will be huge lines to get in and try out the Apple device and my prediction is that Quest still won't be all that exciting to people. Its vision and execution is just not even close enough to let price matter.

Twitter is the platform of free speech, if you pay. Less so if you don’t. bbc.co.uk/news/business-…

Brilliant story for the #PlatinumJubilee. #HerMajestyTheQueen