Category: amazon

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TechScape: Will Apple’s new VR headset be the one to finally catch on?

In this week’s newsletter: The $3,000 product could be the next Apple gamechanger – or just another cool toy for those who can afford it

Next Monday will see Apple’s worldwide developers conference kick off, and with it one of the company’s two most important annual press events.

Typically, the keynote at WWDC (or “dub dub”) is a software-focused affair, previewing the next versions of iOS, macOS and so on for an audience of developers who need to get to grips with the updates before their launch in the autumn. It’s balanced out by the hardware-focused events oriented around each year’s iPhone launch, since Apple still likes to play the game of announcing and shipping its top-tier products in short order.

A tethered battery pack, designed to sit in the user’s back pocket, to ease the tradeoff between power and performance on the one hand and weight and comfort on the other.

A screen on the front of the headset, designed solely to show the user’s expressions to the outside world, with the goal of making it more comfortable to interact with people wearing the device.

A focus on “passthrough” use, where a camera on the front of the screen shows the outside world to the wearer, with apps and features superimposed on top.

And, most importantly of all, a price tag of about $3,000.

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‘The metaverse will be our slow death!’ Is Facebook losing its $100bn gamble on virtual reality?

The company now known as Meta has spent staggering amounts on creating an immersive successor to the traditional 2D internet. But what has it got to show for it, apart from 11,000 job losses?

What a difference a year makes. Last October, Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg could barely wait to show the world what he was up to. “Today, we’re going to talk about the metaverse,” he enthused in a slick video presentation. “I want to share what we imagine is possible.” Transitioning almost seamlessly from his real self into a computer-generated avatar, Zuckerberg guided us through his vision for the virtual-reality future: playing poker in space with your buddies; sharing cool stuff; having work meetings and birthday parties with people on the other side of the world; customising your avatar (the avatars had no legs, which was weird). Zuckerberg was so all-in on the metaverse, he even rechristened his company Meta.

This month, we saw a more subdued Zuckerberg on display: “I wanna say upfront that I take full responsibility for this decision,” he told employees morosely. “This was ultimately my call and it was one of the hardest calls that I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company.” Meta was laying off 11,000 people – 13% of its workforce. Poor third-quarter results had seen Meta’s share price drop by 25%, wiping $80bn off the company’s value. Reality Labs, Meta’s metaverse division, had lost $3.7bn in the past three months, with worse expected to come. It wasn’t all bad news, though: Zuckerberg announced last month that Meta avatars would at last be getting legs.

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Direct sales may be the future of independent publishing

Things in the publishing industry have dramatically changed in the last few years. It used to be fairly easy to make a living as an author (given you had high quality books to begin with), but those days are over. As with much of society, publishing has become even more all or nothing where a few big selling names control most of the market, and the rest of us fight over the tiny scraps leftover. In addition to that, giants like Amazon are finding new ways to make money off the authors they claim to be helping. They've increased hidden fees, make authors pay "restocking fees" for e-books that readers return, and generally have moved to a pay-to-play type of model where only the authors paying for ads get any notice. This is not a sustainable way to make a living creating art.  Nor is this good for readers.

So, we are trying something new. As you've seen this year, we moved back to all online retailers, rather than being exclusive to Amazon.  We wanted to reach readers where they're at, rather than requiring everyone to come to the 'Zon to get their books.  Not only was Amazon taking larger and larger cuts of our profits and placing restrictive rules around how we marketed and sold our products, but we felt like we were doing a disservice to readers who would prefer to have a choice on where they purchase their books. 

But that's not the biggest change.  In addition to moving back to all the major online retailers, we've also begun to sell them directly through our website. By selling directly we keep about 95% of the profits (more if PayPal is used instead of a credit card to make a purchase). On some books we only made 30% from Amazon.  By adding direct sales to our options, we can easily run specials for our newsletter subscribers, release the books earlier than they would be on other sites, and sell complete book bundles, which are the easiest and most convenient way to purchase them.

With over 50 books available in our store, I'm sure you'll find something to read. And by buying directly from us, your support means I can keep writing books for years to come.

Essentially, we want to provide options for readers.  This requires a lot more work on our end, maintaining multiple websites and our own store, but we believe that it will be better for readers in the long run.  We have other ideas about how to improve the experiences for everyone (we’re currently working to have paperback books available in our store for example), but we're not ready to roll those changes out just yet.  Just know we're constantly thinking about how to make things better, for you, the reader.  So, if you have ideas or comments, please make sure to send me a note at thomaskcarpenter@gmail.com.