Tim Cook unveils $3,500 Vision Pro headset in Apple’s most significant launch since iPhone
Really, just no.
OK, so what do I know etc? But wrong price point. As with anything that requires content to make it work as an environment it needs to be cheap to create the incentives to produce the content.
No, nothing Apple does is cheap or even good value and this is typical Apple – milk the early adopters who will be more concerned with being seen than seeing.
$3,500 Plastic Wank Goggles, please!
I think he knows his market perfectly.
A lot of Apple addicts will buy whatever they put out at whatever cost.
I know plenty of people who always buy the latest Apple phone whenever they change (including one who buys the top one every year!!!!). This is despite the fact I point out there are other phones available that do the same thing much cheaper…
I’m an Apple customer of long standing, but I have no interest in this product. That said, if it follows their normal pattern the third generation will be both cheaper and more capable and thus the one to get. The rest of us can thank the early adopters, who do the beta testing for us.
It’s Apple. If they doubled the price they’d sell twice as many.
I already don’t watch the BBC or read main stream media. Why should I pay a large amount of money to do something I already don’t do? And look like a dork too.
I get the impression that some big tech companies think there’s not much growth left in their old markets and that they therefore need new ones. But I suspect that VR is just a dud idea that Apple and Meta have pursued because they don’t have a good idea. Good ideas don’t occur to you just because you want them to.
I’ve been a big fan of VR and looking forward to it being both cheap and good, especially for things like flight sims.
I bought the PS VR when it was out and although I like it the headset is a hassle, too many wires and needs to be effectively balanced above your head to get decent operation out of it without running out of the play area. The resolution is okay, but no better than that.
I had hopes for Oculus VR, but then they were bought by Facebook which just poisoned the well.
Despite the price (far above my affordability), by taking a pure augmented reality approach and being completely wireless, that might help. Certainly there are plenty who will buy it just because its Apple, but things like using it as a virtual home cinema are going to be a bit useless with a 2 hour battery pack unless you’re plugged into the mains all the time.
For office use, it may help in specific fields like architecture, internal design, 3D animation and the like, but it’s not going to catch on generically. Sending email and working with Excel is not going to be assisted by being VR enabled.
All-in-all I think Apple’s device is interesting, but not exciting. I own an Apple Mac M1, but can’t see myself buying one of these until they’re in the sub $1,000 USD range and have at least a couple of killer apps.
As with anything that requires content to make it work as an environment it needs to be cheap to create the incentives to produce the content.
And Apple buyers are some of the least innovative buyers around. They’re the people who get orders of magnitude three out. They buy the things because they have all the features. But how many use them?
This isn’t a “consumer” device, and nor is it a set of VR goggles. Lots of people (*cough* Meta *cough*) have tried that and failed.
If you watch Apple’s demos of the Vision Pro, they’re selling it as a high end display. Nearly everything they show is 2D displays floating in the air. Not 3D. Not ‘interactive’. No monsters running around your virtual desk. No AR.
So this is in the same category as their high end “media production” devices – the Mac Pro, 5K monitors and the like. In that category, the price is… well not so bad. If you’re a video editor and expect to spend $10K on a studio rig, and regularly switch between a laptop and a cinema screen, then this is a logical step.
That means it’s not intended to sell in the millions, it’s not built round a “killer app” and it doesn’t need an entirely new paradigm to work – it’s just a display. A lot of people will miss this, and expect something to kill Meta or launch a new genre of computing. They’ll be wrong. Some will claim that it’s a failure because it doesn’t do any of those things. Personally, I’m not the target market, I don’t dislike Apple so.. it’s an interesting experiment.
Whether that’ll be enough to make it a success for Apple is anyone’s guess. We *might* see some interesting software that makes use of all that smart silicon, but it could just be (like the Mac Pro) a productivity tool for a niche that Apple know well..
Reassuringly expensive, as the ad used to say. It’s just an iPhone with a giant screen – the key apps they mention are Safari, Notes, FaceTime, and Messages. Fans will lap it up. You’ll probably see someone wearing one if you take a transatlantic flight next year.
I wore a swimming mask on my head on a college rag day and everyone thought it was jolly silly. That’s the problem with this; you look silly wearing it. Can’t get away from that no matter the brand. If they can make the tech smaller, lighter and less silly looking they’ll be on to something.
These things have been knocking about for a bit post-Google Glass.
https://vuzix.uk/products/m4000-smart-glasses, one given use case https://vuzix.uk/pages/warehousing.
Still getting on for 3 large a pair, though.
Or, https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a41176138/us-army-augmented-reality-goggles-soldiers/ based on Microsoft’s Hololens, which didn’t go well; https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/23402195/microsoft-us-army-hololens-ar-goggles-internal-reports-failings-nausea-headaches, although that project would be an extension of the systems already in use for military pilots.
Hololens is at the same price point.
Not convinced about using the word “augmented” in AR, may be “assisted” instead, but either way, not sure the consumer use case exists (bus timetables?), and there’s way too much hype still knocking around from the first wave.
Fairly sure one large aircraft manufacturer used Glass to display service information, schematics and the like, and found it useful. Microsoft list a number of users, which is nice, but with the same use cases as Vuzix.
There’s a video doing the rounds of said item being unveiled to an audience of tech reporters and Apple enthusiasts. As the price tag is revealed, we hear gasps, groans, and quite loud laughing.
Realistic VR
I can recommend the Marques Brownlee review of it, as he’s actually worn the thing for a 30 minute try out. Exceptionally interesting technical achievement, it is a full blown ultra portable computer in many ways, comes with Apples M2 processor plus a huge array of cameras and sensors, you can see why it is priced as it is. Will it succeed though, might depend on getting a really interesting application or applications for it, hence the release in this early and expensive form. They did this with the Apple Watch, initially a near failure but with the appropriate feedback from users it has developed a fairly solid market.
And just for the record, apparently it is NOT Plastic, but a metal frame making it possibly rather heavier than ideal. But like I say, the review is interesting and he’s fairly knowledgeable and straight shooting type.
I suspect that the key word is “Pro”. Sell a high-end device to professional content creators. Let them experiment with it and generate, well, whatever they find they can do with it. That creates the content to be consumed by the wider public using cheaper second- or third-generation hardware. It doesn’t matter if the first offering is unprofitable if it functions as a loss leader for future mass-market versions of the product.
Apple: currently the world’s most successful company (by market cap).
Tim’s commenters: less successful people, many of whom mindlessly insult Apple fans (only Apple has macOS/iOS, etc., you fools. Of course we pay for Apple products (the generally excellent build quality helps too)).
Hmmm. Which way shall I bet, I wonder…?
DK
P.S. I watched the launched and I want a Vision Pro! And I’ve always thought headsets were stupid — but, in spite of myself, I think it looks amazing!