Meta secretly delayed my most anticipated Quest 3 feature, and we finally know why

When the Meta Quest 3 was unveiled I was impressed by a lot of what it had to offer in both the virtual- and mixed-reality departments, but by far the most interesting feature was Augments – persistent MR elements that you can use to decorate your home. As we approach the one-year mark since the headset was unveiled, Meta’s CTO has finally explained why Augments haven’t launched yet.

If you've forgotten about Augments, the concept is they’re a mixture of functional and visual mixed-reality decorations. Some are just meant to look pretty or offer basic functions, like a clock, while others act as portals to your favorite games or quick access to your favorite apps. You can see a version of them in your VR Meta Home as the little pod that launches First Encounters.

When the Quest 3 was first shown off back in September 2023 at Meta Connect 2023 we saw a little of what Augments would offer, and a promise that they’d launch in the not-too-distant future. Now Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO, has revealed on Instagram that back in January Meta “decided it wasn’t good enough,” and so the team decided “to go back to the drawing board.”

Bosworth explained that Augments felt too much like a toy rather than living up to what Meta felt it had promised and wanted to deliver. However, in order to improve the feature it needed to start from scratch with a “completely different technical architecture.”

As a result the feature has been delayed, and Bosworth didn’t provide any kind of timeline for when we might eventually see Augments in action.

With September’s Meta Connect 2024 fast approaching there’s a small chance we’ll see the feature again there, but I hope the next time we see Augments is when Meta is actually ready to it to the public.

A Meta Quest 3 user throwing a giant die onto a virtual medieval tabletop game board full of castles, wizards and knights

Mixed reality is good, but Augments could make it better (Image credit: Meta)

Over-promise, under-deliver 

Meta is developing a worrying habit of teasing updates and hyping up features that it then takes way longer than expected to release, or which don’t live up to expectations.

Augments are the latest example, but we’ve seen it take a year to roll out virtual legs, and oversell the metaverse way ahead of when it could feasibly work as described, while hardware-wise the Meta Quest Pro wound up being a disappointment compared with more budget-friendly offerings like the Quest 3 that launched not long after – with software like Batman: Arkham Shadow being released as a Quest 3 exclusive and skipping the Pro.

I think Meta is also doing a lot of exciting things in the XR space (a catchall for VR, AR and MR); it recently made Horizon OS available to third-party hardware makers, and I love that it gets frequent software improvements. But its errors stick out and if they persist it’ll be a challenge to trust the announcements Meta makes until the product is actually in people’s hands – either physically or virtually.

Going into Meta Connect 2024 I hope Meta takes on board the lessons it's learned over the past couple of years, and as we go beyond the press conference I’d like to see it be more open with its plans, and with obstacles it faces. Setbacks happen, but if a major feature is getting delayed maybe let us know when that decision is made, rather than leaving us in the dark for months.

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Vision Pro arrival dates are getting delayed leaving many frustrated

Pre-orders of Apple’s Vision Pro are supposed to ship out on February 2; however several reports have appeared online claiming there’s going to be a sizable delay.

People have flocked to Reddit and X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) with screenshots of their orders now having an arrival period of February 29 to March 7. That week is commonly seen among the buyers experiencing the delay, but it’s not uniform across the board with others claiming different dates. A user on X says their unit has been pushed back to February 15 while another on Reddit says Apple’s “phone system” told them the headset won’t ship out until March 14. 

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It’s also been reported that Apple is contacting people about the shipping date pushback. A comment on the Vision Pro subreddit states they received a text from the company informing them of the shipping delay.

The setback seems to be primarily happening to two configurations of the headset: the 256GB and 1TB storage models. There hasn't been any news or screenshots showing that the 512GB Vision Pro is seeing similar delays; although we wouldn’t be surprised if it too was getting pushed back. It’s hard to say for sure as there is a lot of chaos surrounding this situation. People are understandably frustrated, plus Apple has yet to make a public statement about the new shipping dates.

To be fair, the dates are estimated delivery times. It’s entirely possible the headsets will arrive on time or the delay won’t be as extreme. In a worst-case scenario, early adopters may have to wait until the dust settles to get their hands on the headset. Or they can go onto eBay and deal with the many, many Vision Pro scalpers.

Prioritizing stores 

It’s unknown exactly what is causing the delay. A prevailing theory being thrown around in online circles is Apple’s recent decision to stock more in-store inventory in preparation for the big day. It argues that the tech giant is choosing to prioritize in-store purchases resulting in a limited amount of headsets for pre-orders. Commenters have said their in-store pickup orders of the Vision Pro are completely fine. They can go to an Apple Store and grab their device without issue. 

That could be one reason, but again, nothing can be said with total confidence due to all the conflicting information. 

So, we reached out to Apple asking if they could provide any details regarding the Vision Pro delay. Will people receive their orders on time or will they have to wait over a month? This story will be updated if we hear back.

For those planning to pick up a Vision Pro on day one with a pre-order, good luck. Industry insider Mark Gurman says some stores “are anticipating little to no day one availability for non-pre orders”, according to his sources.

There are plenty of great headsets out there if you can't get your hands on Apple's latest tech. Check out TechRadar's list of the best VR headsets for 2024 if you want recommendations.

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The Apple Vision Pro means Samsung’s own XR headset has been delayed

The arrival of the Apple Vision Pro has apparently forced a delay in the launch of Samsung's own XR (Extended Reality) headset: the Samsung device is now expected to launch in mid-2024 or later, after having originally been slated for February 2024.

This comes from SBS Biz (via SamMobile), and the story seems to be that seeing the Vision Pro forced Samsung executives to rethink their own device. An upgrade to the display sharpness is one of the possible reasons given for the delay.

Clearly Samsung doesn't want to come out of the gate with a headset that's notably inferior to Apple's own product, even if it's also cheaper. The Vision Pro costs $ 3,499 (about £2,725 / AUS$ 5,230), and is expected to only be available in limited numbers for a while.

Details on exactly what the Samsung XR headset is going to offer are still thin on the ground at this stage, though it is believed to be running Google's Android software, and powered by a Qualcomm chipset of some description.

Choose your reality

All these different versions of reality can take some time to get used to. The XR (or Extended Reality) that Samsung prefers is actually referring to all the different types of related technology that we've seen to date.

Augmented reality (AR) is where digital objects are overlaid on top of the real world. Then there's virtual reality (VR), which refers to completely self-contained digital environments. Mixed reality (MR) generally means enhanced AR, where digital objects are aware of and interact with the physical world around them.

The Vision Pro is usually referred to as a mixed reality device, whereas the Meta Quest 3 is mostly concerned with virtual reality. Extended reality, or XR, is generally taken to mean a combination of AR, VR, and MR – though there's still a lot of confusion, as tech companies tend to all use these terms in different ways.

We'll have to wait and see what Samsung has been building and what it's capable of, but the extra time in development should mean a better device – and a more worthy competitor to the Vision Pro when it finally does see the light of day.

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Microsoft Office 365 cost hike delayed for some users

Microsoft has decided to delay its planned price increase of Office 365 for an additional two weeks for some of its reseller partners.

Back in August of last year, the software giant announced in a blog post that its first “substantive” price increase since launching Office 365 in 2011 was set to occur on March 1 of 2022. 

For those unfamiliar with Microsoft's pricing changes, Microsoft 365 Business Basic will increase from $ 5 to $ 6 per user per year, Microsoft 365 Business Premium will go from $ 20 to $ 22, Office 365 E1 will go from $ 8 to $ 10, Office 365 E3 will go from $ 20 to $ 23, Office 365 E5 will go from $ 35 to $ 38 and Microsoft 365 E3 will go from $ 32 to $ 36.

Thankfully though, pricing will not increase for consumers or Microsoft's education customers at this time but businesses that use Microsoft's office software can expect to pay quite a bit more depending on how many employees they have when they need to renew their subscriptions.

Pricing grace period

In a support document published at the end of February, Microsoft informed its reseller partners that it had created a “transitional grace period” due to high demand by businesses looking to renew their subscriptions before the company's pricing changes went into effect.

As a result, Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) now have until 5pm PDT on March 14 or 12am UTC on March 15 to submit transactions and have them invoiced at the software giant's February 2022 pricing. This means that the next few weeks will likely be quite busy for CSPs as businesses try to renew one last time with the old Office 365 pricing.

While Microsoft did wait over a decade to raise the price of both Office 365 and Microsoft 365, some businesses could turn to Google Workspace or other Microsoft Office alternatives following the implementation of the company's planned price increase.

Via ZDNet

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This eagerly-awaited Microsoft Teams update has been delayed

Fluent Design is Microsoft's design language that the company is rolling out to Windows 11 and other apps throughout the year. But Microsoft Teams is going to have to wait slightly longer for its own update for Fluent emojis.

The update was scheduled for November 2021, but it looks as though emoji, and other features, will be coming soon in a significant update for Teams users.

Its online collaboration platform is reaching its fifth year in 2022, with the pandemic being a significant part of its growth of 250 million users so far. However, with Skype still being maintained by Microsoft as well, the new features for Teams need to differentiate itself from being a good platform for businesses to an essential one.

A fluent delay of features

While Fluent design has been available for Windows 11 and Office 2022, it's also expanded to other apps, such as Paint, Calendar, and other apps by Microsoft.

However, Teams is scheduled to reap the benefits of Fluent design in February, alongside live transcripts of calls, better meeting options, and other features that are coming to the app in 2022.

Video filters were also delayed from August to March this year, where you can customize your appearance before joining a conference call.

Many of these features should prove useful to many, but it depends if some of these are further delayed so that the Fluent design can be finished for Teams in March.

Via MSPowerUser

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Next WordPress release delayed after ‘large red flags’ identified

The WordPress developers have decided to push back the release of the next major version of the popular content management system (CMS) to January, 2022, after some developers expressed concern about the pace of development.

“I think there are some large red flags here that some things are not ready for 5.9….Overall, it seems like right now we are rushing things in a dangerous way,” wrote Addison Stavlo, a contributor to WordPress’ Gutenberg editor.

The original plan was to release WordPress 5.9 in mid December, 2021. However, things weren’t smooth during the alpha release cycle, forcing core developers to make several changes.

Better late than sorry

Not impressed by the changes to “so many things at the last minute,” Stavlo wondered why delaying the release wouldn’t be a better idea than making “regrettable decisions.”

As she announced the revised schedule Tonya Mork, Core Tech Lead for the 5.9 release, shared that the team had two options; either move the major features that had unresolved issues to the WordPress 6.0 release, or delay the release of WordPress 5.9. 

After careful deliberation, the core developers decided that the issues would be best handled now than later.

“The 6.0 release isn’t due until April 2022—too long for the community to wait for them [the features]. After processing this list of issues, Core Editor team saw the features could ship in 5.9 with the revised schedule. This decision, to delay the 5.9 release, was not made lightly,” explains Mork.

5.9 is still in feature freeze, and Mork stresses that the developers will use the elongated development period to iron out the issues and help 5.9 get to a Stable state.

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