Yep. I will never use any VR product by Meta. Mark can go zuck himself.

March 2023 they sold 20M Quests. Half as many as PS5. That counts as “taken off” in my book.

VR is already great today, and lots of us are enjoying it. I know several people with VR systems.

I agree that the tech isn’t there, but unless we figure out some new physics it’s going to be impossible to put enough battery, computing power, and cooling capacity in something the size of sunglasses. So the tech for VR like we really want is at least 20 years away, if not more.

I’m waiting for more Bigscreen Beyond class weight headsets. 127 grams.

But it’s tethered and the headset itself is ~1000, and you need the stations and controllers as well.

They just announced that they opened up the OS for other manufacturers to use. I know Asus/ROG is supposed to have a headset in the works using the OS.

The index is better overall and I love mine, but I can’t help but feel jealous that someone can just grab their quest, put it on and get into VR immediately. I have to cart my PC downstairs, turn the base stations on, find the index and wire it all up, troubleshoot why Windows has decided to mess up the drivers and now nothing works, and maybe half an hour later finally get into a game or completely give up and try again another time.

The quest gains a lot in portability and ease of setup, and that does result in a lot of other features being sacrificed but to most people the downsides don’t matter as much.

Bezos actually was refunded tax $ one year

In 2011, a year in which his wealth held roughly steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return reporting he lost money — his income that year was more than offset by investment losses. What’s more, because, according to the tax law, he made so little, he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

Write-offs are entirely misunderstood by people. Writing off losses doesn’t magically make loss profitable.

I’ll use myself as an example. I teach underwater photography at a university as a side gig. Last year I made about $3,000 teaching the class, and I also spent about $1,000 on underwater camera gear for the class. Because of that I get to reduce my taxable income by $1,000, so it’s as if I made $2,000.

At my tax bracket a write-off reduces my income taxes by 22% of the expense. So on a thousand-dollar purchase I’m still losing nearly 800 bucks.

indeed… you’d expect big bucks on the D part… new factory, going for mass production, etc… and even then, you can only build so fast

Meta is valued at 1.12 Trillion, which, sure, is only ~1/2 of Apples 2.6 Trillion… but Meta could invest in VR for the next 20 years without feeling the pain.

I do love my Q2 and Q3, and hope they keep pushing VR forward, which is the main (maybe only) reason i was happy to see apple join the competition.

Take a look at Meta revenue numbers, they can afford billions in R&D investment just fine. I’m not sure what market share you’re talking about but there’s plenty of money for them to afford the VR research they do.

Whether VR works for Meta or not, they have invested in technology and built careers for employees. This is why we should have corporate taxes. I’d rather see corporations keep employees and advance technology instead of giving dividends to the wealthiest people in the world. While the product might not work out, I bet there are many people who worked on it that will take those skills to new projects.

Many people have no clue how taxes work, but darn it, they wanted them raised. It just encourages other behaviors, such as offshoring money, as many companies do. We really need a complete write of the tax code to encourage paying workers well, creating jobs, etc and less focus on avoiding paying the taxes. I don’t care if a company makes billions in profit if their workers are all paid well, treated well, etc. We will make it up with them having money to spend in the economy.

I am still not convinced VR is a worthy technology outside of a few niche uses. I went to the verge when that was open and that was pretty cool. At home is nothing like that.

The quest probably has the best experience though, it’s really easy to setup and works both standalone or connected to PC via cable or wifi 6, there really isn’t anything as easy and accessible as it.

yeah it gets distributed in the economy and gets absorbed in the system. at least it’s not being hoarded or funneled outside the country.

the other poster is just parroting things they do not understand.

Its also drawing real resources away from other things. The real estate used on these luxury failures had other potential buyers and raises costs across the board as it competes for chip factory space, marketing, etc.

If the money was taxed out of circulation it actually does essentially vanish, increasing the value of every remaining dollar if the state budget remains unchanged - its the easiest way to reduce inflation.

These big corporations with lots of money do affect everyone when they make big stupid decisions - resources get misallocated and costs go up. Money doesn’t exist in a void, the things people do with it have real world effects.

Do they? I thought it was just the cheapest.

If all you care about is money, then yeah sure. If you actually give a shit about humanity the return would be absolutely immense for society.

They shouldn’t have that amount of disposable income in the first place, and a good portion should have been tax money. If that money were invested in public housing the return would be massive.

Really? You don’t think that building solid foundations for people to get on their feet and start making more money themselves, money that they can turn around and spend on more products, would have a fantastic return? The benefit for the economy would be immense but corporations can’t write that into their spreadsheets changing their bottom line so it “doesn’t count”