So now looking at it again, I've noticed that since the Oculus Rift entered people's heads some decade ago, VR headsets have addressed the major detractors more and more, mostly about comfort. This new things hypes itself up to be lightweight and comfortable. I'm sure it will be if you believe their spiel about their fancy aluminium chassis and whatnot, but the thing that hasn't been addressed is why someone should use these, as others have pointed out.
I'm hedging my bets on them pawning these off to schools and businesses under the various pretenses the idiots we call higher-ups always fall victim for (productivity, future-proofing, etc). Maybe businesses will start assigning the future annual iterations of devices like these, if this takes off in any measure, to their work-from-home employees so they can attend their virtual meetings or whatever. I cannot imagine anything that could sell the average Joe on these devices other than "I have to use it for work", in which case he would then consider using it more for other things such as watching Disney+ and scrolling social media while laying in bed without having to hold his phone. In this sort of way this device could offer more convenience. Then of course, adoption would necessarily spread like a virus to lots of other people.
Apple promises a simple development experience for it, utilising many of their existing technologies or others like Unity. They release the SDK next month. Perhaps it'd be simple enough to port to that people would be willing to give it a shot, even if it's userbase will probably not be large. I mean, they couldn't expect a modicum of success unless it were.
Of course, I don't like the privacy implications. They have cameras on the outside and inside of this thing. The outer ones make sense, so that you can see the outer world with it. I'm more concerned about the inner cameras, which the one thing they claim it's for is displaying your eyes on the outside of the device.
Aside from the fact it makes you look like a dork wearing scuba gear, this opens up a whole new avenue of surveying users without their knowledge. So far the method of measuring user reactions has been through how they interact with the computer, but that isn't deep enough. With this, you could perhaps know exactly what a user is looking at, how they read the user interface, measure their emotions at any point; social media companies could improve their social media addiction algorithms by an insane margin with this extra depth and precision.
Everything that came before could be laughed at, but Apple stinking their shitty finger in this pie is concerning because they are a designated industry leader who can worm their way into anything. Look at how they gutted their architecture for over a decade and made more money on it. Look at how they successfully gaslit organisations to get locked into their systems so now you see classrooms filled with ungodly Mac computers.
If they can succeed in inching people towards this premise, either through the way I described or otherwise, then it would become a permanent fixture until something worse comes along.
I sincerely hope this device will be a major and embarrassing flop.