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I don't know why everyone is so negative. The gameplan seems pretty clear to me.
- Make expensive fancy product. This is effectively a "devkit" that companies can use to start experimenting with AR software.
- Make lower cost product. There are now a few decent apps available and early adopters will be willing to buy it to be one the leading edge.
- Now there is a bigger market, leading more companies to be willing to develop apps.
Apple is hoping that this is enough to break the chicken-and-egg cycle. Enough to get a few powerful apps such that more regular consumers will be willing to buy which again increases the addressable market which makes it more attractive to companies.
The price immediately put this product into the grave. They should take out all the useless features like the eye passthrough, or the bizarre face scanning, if it’ll only ever be used for calls. If this were to be used in a gaming scenario, sort of like what the PSVR2 does, that’d be a whole different conversation
Note that suspends != cancelled and it's just the "Pro", with a cheaper model allegedly in the works.
We'll see where a cheaper model lands in terms of price, but it's very clear now that $3500+ isn't really the price range where most people buy something out of curiosity. Because let's face it: the Vision (Pro) still lacks a "killer app" for the masses.
That's the important bit that everybody is missing:
Apple has suspended work on the second-generation Vision Pro headset to singularly focus on a cheaper model
Clicking through to the paywalled article, the headlines reads as follows:
Apple Suspends Work on Next Vision Pro, Focused on Releasing Cheaper Model in Late 2025.
I am as unoptimistic on the future of VR as everybody else here, but can we please leave the nuance in? Apple are not turning the key on VR, at least not yet, they are simply doing the predicable thing that everybody said their would: Release a VR headset that isn't targeted at developers only.
Everyone I’ve talked to that has used a Vision Pro has said it’s an incredible piece of magical technology, but it’s utterly useless.
It’s literally just Apple flexing.
but it’s utterly useless.
That imo has been the issue with VR/AR for a while now. The Hardware as you said is pretty good by now and looking at something like the quest even afforable. What's lacking is content and use cases.
Smartphones had an easier time being adopted, since it was just moving from a larger to a smaller screen. But VR/AR actually needs a new type of content to make use of it's capabilities. And there you run into a chicken/egg problem, where no one is putting in the effort (and vr content is harder to produce) without a large user base.
Just games and some office stuff (that you can do just as well on a regular pc) aren't cutting it. You'd need stuff like every major sport event being broadcast with unique content, e.g. formula one with the ability to put yourself into the driver seat of any car.
You've nailed it. Ordinarily, Apple is good at throwing its weight (money) around to make things like this happen, but it seems like there weren't many takers this go-round, so we just got an overpriced, beautiful and fascinating paperweight.
That's why the biggest use case for VR has been gaming and metaverses. It's a ready-to-go thing that adapts well, but it's certainly not for everyone. For my part, I'm saving up for a PS VR2, because it's adding PC support soon and I already own a PS5 as well. Far, far cheaper than Apple's device, and likely quite good still.
"Hey look what we could do at six times the price point" isn't a flex, it's stupidity.
Like why not just release Apple brand Skis, or team up with Nike and make some shoes, or Jewelry if you want to do high priced stuff rich idiots pay for.
It's a flex because the vision pro has the best optics and display technology ever made. It's stupid because it has no use. It's not a flex because it's expensive, it's expensive because it's a flex, if that makes sense.
I'm not sure why they tried this.
'We made a VR games headset, but replaced the games with office related programs, like calenders and notepads'
Did any of them ever use an Oculus Quest? Like, why did they try this? Is this Apple's Google Glass moment? Did they really think that if you pay enough youtubers to wear it in public, normal people would magically go into car-level debt to emulate them?
In fact, I'll go as far as to say this campaign and price point was a bigger mistake, and a louder failure than Google Glasses.
I don't know how far things have come since the aptly named Acer AH101-D8EY, but that was the last time I tried to be "productive" in VR and it was absolutely not working.
Is this the virtual boy of Apple? A product that never really made no sense to anybody and was never really supported?
I was hoping they'd get the price down to something sane. It looks like it could be a cool tool for CAD. Of course there won't be any input available from a non-Apple computer so I still wouldn't want one.
I desperately want a virtual desktop environment for plain ass computing. Give me infinite windows for my spreadsheet and IDE and that’s all I need!
you can do this with the quest 3 i think
Without a Meta account tho? I've got hard blockers on price or shenanigans (or both) for every headset I know of.
I’ve heard the quest 3 is awesome and does almost everything the Vision does. Not sure I can justify the price to myself yet.
Apple should make a virtual headset you can buy in META, then put it on when you are already in a VR setting, except now you can use Apple services with it!
That way it would have zero production cost, be absolutely as useless as it already is, and can be just as overpriced.
It seems like the perfect Apple scheme.
If you can continue with vapid schemes that ensure endless shareholder value I'll follow you anywhere senpaisano