This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
bill of materials” for the headset at $1,542, and that doesn’t include the costs of research and development, packaging, marketing or Apple’s profit margin.
Please read it, it's just another version of the "the iPhone cost 500$ to make". Research and especially marketing can sometimes be as much as the material and assembly cost. Id be surprised that apple doesn't make a profit on it, but it might not be close at all to 100% .
It costing that much in materials seems a bit much though I heard its casing is milled from a brick (probably not literally) of aliminium. Combing the other high tech and mass production aspects I feel like it costing 1k is more believable. But what do I know not even employed in any manfacturing job.
It quite clearly seems to be some kind of public beta test product and enough rich people seem to be happy to pay for being the test hamsters.
Status costs, you can't want to be a gossip wannabe WO spending anything..
The reason: Apple.
bill of materials” for the headset at $1,542, and that doesn’t include the costs of research and development, packaging, marketing or Apple’s profit margin.
Unjerk for a moment. How much should something like this cost? Serious question. Seems like it can do things other devices really can’t. Saw a video yesterday from a programmer who said it could replicate an impossible physical setup. I don’t have a need for it but maybe someone else can see the value.
The Quest 3 is capable of the same stuff and is only $500.
Adding the Valve Index is a another high end model that does all this and more for $1000.
The big difference is the Apple's AR features
Gotta subsidize that lobbying and bribes to keep slavery strong on their assembly lines somehow.
The lady in the thumbnail looks like she stoking someone nipples like they’re radio dials.
Where do I get that game?
On the app store inside the headset
“Because some dipshits will buy anything to be better than others, and also some people have just fucktons more money than they probably should “ - there, saved you a click
Apple financial statement for 2019, page 17.
I don't like how hard the article tries to make it seem like the markup is justified because of all of Apple's other costs. Apple will sell the product at whatever price it thinks the customer will pay, and the margins only matter to determine whether the product is worth it for Apple to sell (I'd love to see what the payback period is on the project though). The cost isn't that outrageous if this COGS is correct, maybe slightly on the higher side for a tech product.
The real discussion should be whether the product is worth the price they are charging based on the utility and the cost of being essentially a beta tester as an owner of a 1st gen product.
Because Apple
The tech inside is great, but Apple also knows its customers are happy to pay a hefty premium over cost. I hate Apple but they are amazing at branding at end of day.
Apple are almost certainly planning a non “pro” model that will be much cheaper and the pro’s high pricing drives discussion, exclusivity, which leans in on their aspirational brand modus. Thus, the non-pro model will likely have absurd sales as people rush to finally buy in at their price level.
I don’t support it or like it but Apple have been following this playbook for decades now and unfortunately it really works.
It’s also easier to engineer the thing first without heavy cost pressure then reengineer it to be cheaper. With added benefit of better understanding the market and demand
$1000 monitor stand
$80 to undo what you did to slow down my phone.
/thread
Yeah there's no way it doesn't cost an absolute fortune to make a Vision Pro. The display is nuts, and if reports are to be believed, extremely difficult to make and with a very low yield. Then there's a bunch of other high tech stuff in there.
It's pretty much a polished prototype for Apple to simultaneously explore possible design avenues in the VR space, gather data on and overcome unforeseen obstacles in new VR tech and its development process, and get the ball rolling on VR software development on the Apple side.
The one perplexing thing is that right now VR has two main usecases: gaming and wanking. Apple takes a dim view of both. I think that's something they'll have to re-evaluate as they work to bring out more consumer-focused, sub $1k VR devices.
The VR wanking and gaming markets are too saturated for Apple to bother with. They want the VR computing market, which is essentially vacant.
They seem to be pushing it on the productivity angle, but until someone makes a super light weight and open air headset I'm not wearing it for 8 hours a day.
gather data on
Yes. I make digital products for a living and our process is continuously informed by usage statistics from our customers. We also do focus group testing, and it has its place, but live data feedback gives us statistically meaningful readings of how people use our products and this tells us what to focus on to make them better.
Apple has been in pure focus group testing for a decade+ on this product and they absolutely just need to get into the field and accelerate their development with usage statistics. It doesn’t have to sell in the tens of millions. Remember focus group participants number in the dozens or hundreds, and a secretive company like Apple can’t afford to have too many of them.
The Vision Pro marks the end of prototyping and the beginning of actual product development. This is why I don’t care at all about the v1 product. It’s a starting point. Everything interesting happens from here on.
For wanking; it still has Safari, and Pornhub still exists 👍🏽
Spoken as someone who clearly has never used a VR headset for any sort of video content. To get even passable framerates at resolutions that don't look atrocious, you're looking at multiple GB for scant minutes of VR video content.
Unless you just want to watch the same crap you already do, but on an effectively building sized flatscreen, bandwidth and even local data storage and transfer rates become an issue fast.
Gaming at least I feel like they’ve been trying to support more as a company for several years. It hasn’t necessarily translated to results, but it seems like they’re trying a lot more than they did a decade ago.
Yeah if you watch the iFixit tear down it’s obvious these things are just packed to the gills with tech. I’m not mega surprised they ended up costing so much. It’s really bleeding edge.
That said it’s way too expensive for me to get on board and I think they made some poor choices. Especially the outer display. The amount of weight, battery drain, fragility, and (presumably) expense that display alone added is just plain dumb. And it looks a lot worse IRL than in their videos.
I also think the aluminum looks great but I wonder how much lighter the headset would be if it were plastic without the outer display and glass.
