Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - Mailbag: Metaverse Week Concludes, A Hater's Take on Virtual Reality, The Apple Question, Touring the Stratechery Travel Kit

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

Ben remembers why he believes in the future of VR, Andrew remembers why he's not a fan the metaverse movement, listeners wonder about possibilities at Apple and beyond, and Ben offers guidance on tech travel kit best practices.

Hello and welcome to Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp, and this is a free preview of today's episode. Zuckerberg is more committed than ever. Like, he's so clearly enthusiastic and animated by this sort of stuff. In a way that's sort of very tangible, particularly when you're talking to him in person, you get the impression that he's all in and he's not worried about it. But number two, like, this is what I sort of, you know, I try to sort of put in the conclusion, which is, you know, Zucker, I would have, what I,

I wrote Zuckerberg in particular seems more committed to VR than ever. It may be the case that he has seen as the founding father of the metaverse, even as meta is a potential casualty. And that's like the tension I feel here where I'm just not sure this makes sense for meta. On one hand, I get the social point even more. On the other hand, like, when is this ever going to actually make money and be worth the investment and the lack of focus on the other parts of meta's business that need a lot of work? I don't know, I'm kind of rambling on here,

but I did come out of this with a lot of sort of mixed feelings and thoughts where there is something real here. I can understand why he's into it, but I don't know. I'm not sure about the meta angle, big picture. Yeah, well, and Zuckerberg's involvement, you need VR to be seen as cool and not creepy. And I think people already in the mainstream,

they look at Facebook and Zuckerberg. as creepy, and that isn't totally fair based on the last like five years of reporting. I mean, Facebook was like blamed for Trump's election and all sorts of stuff. And then Facebook's done plenty of stuff that isn't great. And so some of the criticism is deserved. But I think there's just a lot of baggage. And if you want people to experience this technology on its own terms, it's going to be really challenging with Zuckerberg as like the face of the movement. And you brought up the iPhone on the last episode. Like the iPhone, it was definitely helpful that people thought Apple was cool and Steve Jobs was cool. And that helped carry it. Like it was a great enough product that it probably would

have succeeded regardless. But sometimes that matters when you're trying to, you know, build momentum in the mainstream. Yeah. The other thing about the iPhone is people already had phones. And so like, oh, wait, you're going to buy a phone regardless. You're going to carry a phone regardless. What if the phone you carried was actually way more awesome and did way more things, right? Like, so that barrier to interest, like, okay, instead of spending $200, what if you spent $200? Also, because they had the whole carrier subsidy thing was such a big thing then, you know,

and you also, you just get something that's a million times better, right? Like, that's a pretty great selling proposition, whereas the VR thing, it's as a cold start problem. It's like, what if not only you spent $500, but you spent $500 on this thing that you've never experienced that every demo you look at from a 2D screen looks lame? And like, all you see is like these terrible graphics and, and all this sort of bit. Doesn't that sound fun? And it's like, I don't think Apple could sell that, right? Like, like, at the end of the day, you're asking people to to basically spend a lot of money on faith that, look, this tech blogger says it's, It's pretty cool to have a meeting in VR.

Like, what's the way of the salesman? I'm not buying it. I'm your friend and I do not buy it. So here, let me walk you through. I have a couple takes on why I do not believe in the future of VR. And if people don't want to hear the haters take on VR, just skip ahead five minutes. You're just trying to paint me in the corner of being the number one VR cheerleader, which I resent. But I continue.

I know. Do not feel any pressure to jump in and defend. VR or meta or any of the people involved here. But I will say, number one, the Metaverse campaign just completely ignores where consumers are with tech more generally right now. Like, people don't want a more immersive relationship with technology. If you go to downtown D.C. and interview 100 people, 97 of them will say, I wish I used my phone less. Like, ask them about their iPhone and they'll be like, you know what, it's great, but I really wish I used it less. So with VR, even in the best case scenario, where you solve for the creepiness of all these

avatars, the motion sickness that people get, how uncomfortable the headsets are, there's going to be this hurdle where most people just don't want technology that's going to pull them further away from being present in their daily lives. And like, I'm not saying it can never work in the mainstream and people can never change their minds, but it just feels like a lot of folks are overlooking, like, the sheer arrogance of seeing billions of people who want less addictive technology and saying, actually, all of society is going to go in the other direction 10 years from now. Do you have thoughts? It's killing me that you're criticizing the sheer arrogance as you declare that down. downtown D.C. is a representative of the world. Maybe it's not.

I'm just saying, all right? I can only speak from my experience and here in the fishbow, everybody's like, get the shit out of my life. I'm speaking for everyone to the world. Yes. I mean, this is where your haters, like Lucid Mike, are going to be super upset at you. Because you haven't tried it yet. And this is where I think both are right. I think your take is the common take.

I think Lucid Mike is right that when you try it, there is. an aspect of VR that is anti-tech because in the iPhone way where the issue with an iPhone is you're out with friends and then someone's on their phone. It's like, dude, I'm sitting right here. Why don't you interact with me like in the real world? VR is compelling where you're by yourself and you actually get to leave an isolated experience and go experience something with other people. So the potential payoff here is the inverse of the phone forcing you to withdraw. it's actually giving you a place from isolation to to engage. But the middle route here and where I think you're both right is that sounds great in theory as I'm sitting here on a podcast.

It's very hard to, number one, convince people of that. And number two, there's so many barriers to enjoying that and experiencing that that it's just going to like even if I'm right and loose and Mike is right, it's going to take so long to get there that it's. it could be a while. Yeah. Well, and the, the horizon workrooms thing, to me is a really good example. Like,

I don't need to say real VR people hate the fact that I love workrooms. They're like, number one, it's lame. Number two, there's so many other cooler social experiences than sitting in a meeting. But I would say,

number one, that's where it, it quick for me. So I am sort of stuck on it for sure. But number two, I keep thinking about this go-to-market thing. And if, you know, this is where the enterprise angle, I think, is compelling because people didn't go by PCs in the 80s.

They got a PC at work and only then realized having a computer was pretty quick. Yeah, but Andrew Sharp, Sr. was sitting here in the 1980s saying, who wants to use a computer that's ridiculous? Like, I went to downtown D.C. and everyone's like, this is stupid. So I think there's a fair thing there. And I'm wary of being that guy. Just for the record, I could be completely wrong about all of this. But like, you have to think practically about how people actually interact throughout the workday. Every normal person on the planet, when someone on a team's call puts on their video and then peer pressures everyone else into getting on video, everyone sits there grumbling.

And like, do we really think it's going to be more appealing when instead of getting on video, everyone has to, put on their headset and get into VR mode. No, I think I want to double down that. I think that's a really good point. I think where VR gets really compelling is when it's lightweight enough and comfortable enough and battery life is good enough that you're already in VR, right? And so like there's, Facebook actually or meta launched a feature this week where you can you can have, you can actually like with the Microsoft partnership, you can actually stream

windows into your headsets. You don't even need a computer at all. but you can be using your computer. And now, in the case of jumping in a VR meeting, it's not putting on a headset and going into a meeting. It's just clicking on a button or you're hitting whatever, your meeting link and you're now in a virtual room. But you are already in virtual reality because you had like all your screens

and you had your whole workplace sort of in VR. But that kind of makes my point where this is even further away than it seems because if it's a prerequisite to already be in VR, then the VR headsets have to be sort of. so much better. They have to have to have higher resolution. They have to be more comfortable. They have to be, you know, battery battery life. I agree that whole go get a headset, put it on is already is a big blocker. And not only that, it puts them pretty far behind where PCs were in the 80s. PCs had word processing tools and could make everything more efficient for knowledge, economy, workers. and I'm not convinced that any of this would actually make things more efficient for today's white-collar people.

And this would obviously be great if there's another global pandemic and we're all at home. It is true. I don't know if that's actually where things are going to be for the next 15 or 20 years. I certainly hope not. Yeah, I do think it's really compelling in the context of distributed work where how do you still get, there is something different about a meeting in person. right, where there's just more back and forth. And I use the example from my passport team where we had this really difficult issue.

We had to talk through it and we had to make this, you know, this big architectural change. And number one, it's just striking when I think back to that decision. My memories of being in VR. It's not of being where I was physically. But it was definitely, it was so much better for that sort of conversation and going through the pluses and cons and things on those lines. But the flip side is that our team hasn't used VR and money. because someone like moved and they forgot to charge it and like putting it on to big hassle.

And so yeah, it sort of like captures both both of the issues. All right. And that's the end of the free preview. If you'd like to subscribe and receive every episode of this show, you can do so by subscribing to Stratecre Plus. That'll give you access to every Sharp Tech episode, all of our Sharp China episodes, The Dithering Podcast with Ben and John Gruber,

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