A small note to the HN moderators: the previously submitted title of this article mentioned Kinect by name, and I clicked through. If I had seen just the new title, "PrimeSense bought by Apple for $345M", I would have no idea what it was and moved on. I'm sure the new title is more succinct/accurate, but the old title was more helpful.
This might be the last chance to get a developer unit [1]. Depends what Apple intends to do with the technology, I guess, but they usually seem to keep technologies for themselves. FingerWorks stopped selling immediately when Apple acquired them [2].
There goes the industry. PrimeSense was, to my knowledge, the only company selling affordable room-range 3D sensors to independent developers.
There are countless unexplored avenues for 3D sensing technology, far beyond gimmicky gestural controls. My own application, as a high-accuracy presence detector for home automation, reached the front page of HN a few years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2303395). Others were using these sensors for DIY robotics applications, telemedicine, etc.
Now we'll probably have to wait another 20 years for another round of patents to expire before we "little guys" get another shot at depth sensing.
Good luck to PrimeSense, they probably deserve the exit, but bad news for the rest of us.
This purchase certainly makes one wonder what Apple is up to. Kinnect has been, for the most part, a party-game interface, and that's not really in Apple's bailiwick. Capri is not really small enough or appropriate for phones, since you tend to gesture with your phone rather than at it. It is small enough that it could be included in laptops and tablets though. There are obvious gimmicks Apple is likely to go for, like gesturing at your laptop to make it unlock or summoning Siri with a dance move. It might also be a decent couch-interface for Apple TV, if Apple hasn't completely given up on that yet.
Here's hoping Apple has something interesting under wraps to put Primesense to work on and isn't just filling up their patent war-chest.
I'm really surprised Microsoft hasn't bought the company yet already. Kinect is the key differentiator for the Xbox versus the Playstation, and it can't be a positive thing for Microsoft's supply chain for a key manufacturer to be bought up by Apple.
IMHO, gesture navigation suck. It's much more expensive for your body to move your arm+hands around compared to one single click of a finger.
If you are playing a game, it's fine, you want to move around depending on the game style. But once you're looking for relaxing activities, like flipping over channels, is stressful.
Regarding the headline, "A sensible exit: PrimeSense bought by Apple for $345M", does anyone have any opinion on the price here? It seems reasonable, but really just serves to highlight just how absurd the Snapchat offer was earlier this week (in my opinion).
This is disappointing (or encouraging, if you're an Apple competitor). Primesense is inferior technology. Kinect 1 (Primesense) uses structured light scanning, while Kinect 2 (not Primesense) uses far superior "time of flight" measurement.
Looks like Microsoft got the better deal here with a better camera and lower acquisition price.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/21/sources-confirm-microsoft-...
If Apple did indeed acquire Primesense, there certainly is good possibility that they will keep the hardware and software for themselves and stop licensing it out to other companies.
I wonder if this spells doom for the following products: ASUS Xtion http://event.asus.com/wavi/product/xtion.aspx
Structure Sensor http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/occipital/structure-sens...
This is probably bad news for leap motion who was surely hoping apple would acquire them. Maybe google will acquire leap?
Didn't they already try to sell their tech to Apple before they went to MS, but got turned down?
I've worked for a number of years on the motion processing sensor side. The Apple acquisition makes sense, as it helps to add another input device for what I suspect will be an Apple TV. For the most part, everyone has hands and arms. To enable your hands to control what's showing on the screen seems in theory to be quite practical.
On the flip side, playing games is one thing.... controlling your TV is a different story altogether. I'm not sure how great an experience it will be. Samsung already has gesture controls on some of their camera-equipped TVS. The experience of waving your hands around for control can actually get a bit tiring.
It will be interesting to find out how Apple plans to integrate this technology into their devices.
Here are some facts:
$85M investments so far.
3 years ago, the company refuses $400M offer from Microsoft (rumour) - saying:
"we are here for the long run".
It Powering XBox Kinect, Dumped at XBox One.
Also amongst "Most Innovative Companies (2011)" [1]
I don't think this has anything to do with Apple TV or gestures on tablets. IMO, those are gimmicky applications of the technology that look cool but aren't practical on a daily basis. My guess is that Apple is making an augmented reality play, hedging that Google Glass will be successful and they'll have to compete with them. Infrared motion tracking has a lot greater potential to be successful in augmented reality versus the single camera setup Glass uses.
This makes a lot of sense especially if Apple wants to move Apple TV on. Lots of TV manufacturers like Samsung has gesture navigation implemented already.
This should be exciting.
This is a huge win for Apple! I expect to eventually see this in product categories they don't even offer yet, like smart home products. Not to mention the obvious, that they could add gesture support to the AppleTV.
I speculate this is a reaction to Google's recent acquisition of Flutter.
This is likely a soft landing. Microsoft is actively developing their own time-of-flight depth camera in-house rather than using Primesense's "projected computed stereo" solution. Primesense probably saw the writing on the wall...
I like disassembling depth cameras and laser rangefinders. We used the sensors extensively in robotics, back when the only ToF option was the $10k Swiss Ranger SR4000. You can find some of my writings on my robotics website:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/03/28/low-cost-depth-cameras...
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/06/20/low-cost-depth-camera-...
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/01/04/velodyne-hdl-64e-laser...