> As for "killer apps", honestly, I have never really believed in the concept. There's nothing on my smartphone that I can't do without it being specifically on my smartphone. But combined, the whole ecosystem is extremely useful. My smartphone also isn't the seamless digital assistant Jobs predicted it would be, but it's still extremely useful. Back in 2008, most people thought smartphones weren't for them, but now most find them extremely useful.
Smart phones are portable web browsers. That's the killer app. That's immensely useful. VR is non portable, at least in the sense that you're gonna look like a huge asshole loading up your quest on the subway. That's a pretty difficult barrier.
My point was not that smartphones aren't great. My point was that the whole "killer app" discussion is broken.
If you took away my smartphone today, I'd be pretty upset. It'd leave a whole of convenience in my life. But I'd ultimately adapt and continue living largely the same way I'm living now.
If you took away my PC today, my career would be over. I'd have to find a whole new way to live.
"Killer app" discussions tend to devolve into essentialism arguments. What's essential to one person is a frivoloty to others. But I don't think any of that matters. Game consoles are clearly not essential, yet they're big business. Some people gotta have a huge TV in their living room with cable and all the streaming services, others are fine just watching DVDs, still others are fine with no TV. Yet nobody is arguing that game consoles or TVs shouldn't exist just because they aren't universally appealing. So why VR? What is it about VR that evokes these responses "it's dead/dying/should die?"
Killer app does not mean you would die without it. It means the app is so good that you would buy the hardware just for that app.
VR isn't dead, but it has no killer apps. It has no obvious path to be the next smart phone. Video game consoles have plenty of killer apps. It's the games.
VR games aren't that great, and the claim seems to be that they're going to be the next big social platform / computer tech rather than a game console alternative.
I own an index to play phasmophobia and beat saber. I'm very pessimistic about the tech's ability to become mainstream.
Why would we need to take VR headsets out into the world? Is this an issue for the fridges killer app of keeping things cold?
Mass adoption of VR headsets is not the goal of the industry I don't think, it has a niche use case that only it can achieve and that is plenty enough. It's just one tool.
If ever there were to be a technology that replaces smartphones it might be AR, but I doubt that too.
Perhaps that's where my thinking gets unstuck, in my mind Meta is adjacent to the existing VR industry. Their goals don't seem to align with what VR has so far tried to achieve. I know how silly that sounds, considering they're so closely related, but it's almost an uncanny valley representation of what VR already is.
Smart phones are portable web browsers. That's the killer app. That's immensely useful. VR is non portable, at least in the sense that you're gonna look like a huge asshole loading up your quest on the subway. That's a pretty difficult barrier.