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To be fair, a lot of people were wondering the same thing when the iPad was announced. Now there’s like a billion of them out there.
They were wondering that for the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, and AirPods. I’d bet that in 10 years a decent portion of the population will have some sort of headset, Apple or otherwise.
None of those had a point nearly as questionable as this headset thing. The ipod was an advanced mp3 player, which was very popular and common tech at the time. The iPhone was an advanced phone with a large touchscreen, which was rapidly becoming very common at the time. The iPad was an advanced tablet, which was a concept that had already been tried many times by many other companies by then. The air pods are just advanced wireless earbuds, which nobody could ever deny were rapidly becoming more popular.
VR headsets are fundamentally different from all of those, in that there’s no technological and social precedence quite like it. People used mp3 players and watches and phones before Apple did something new. Nobody was wondering the point of a better mp3 player that could hold massive amounts of songs. But the history of humankind says nothing about the masses’ willingness to walk around in public with big ass high tech ski goggles strapped to their faces. VR is much, much more unknown compared to those.
I get what you’re saying, and regarding people walking around in public wearing a headset, I completely agree. It’ll be a very long time before that happens, if ever.
I disagree that AR won’t become more ubiquitous in people’s lives. Right now, the biggest gripe I see when people talk about Vision Pro is the price. Which was also the case with all the other Apple products I mentioned. The price will come down, it’ll get more features, and it will become more attractive to consumers.
Only time will tell which of us will be right.
We can argue that this product has no continuity with anything anyone has ever used, or we can admit that it is a new kind of immersive screen for a world where people are absolutely hooked to screens. It’s pretty simple.
And the very concept of virtual reality has been an inevitability for decades. This is something people have been fantasizing about for a long time, thought they underestimated the technical challenges and limitations of it all. We’re getting close to overcoming most of them now.
While the whole world laughs at Mark Zuckerburg, Occulus headsets are selling in rapidly increasing numbers. They sold more headsets in 2021 than Microsoft sold Xboxes. So to use your own words, yes, this product is a foray into a space that is rapidly growing in popularity.
If you have a computer space with multiple monitors with various equipment interfacing with it cluttering up a desk at your home, imagine all of that just completely gone, cleaned up, with nothing there but a recliner and a headset that can even go with you.
I think this is the value proposition. The price is too high for me, but I don’t think there’s anything to be confused about. The smart watch and iPad took more for me to wrap my head around than this.
People understood what the iPhone was about immediately. Heck, they knew before it was even announced.
Same for the Apple Watch…ish. People didn’t know exactly what area it would end up focusing on, but the idea of getting and responding briefly to notifications without getting your phone out has always been appealing.
AirPods people have, again, always understood the appeal of. People are/were just angry at the option of using wired headphones being taken away.
I mean, yeah, you can find people who believed in them. But the general consensus around all those products was they are too expensive, don’t offer any meaningful upgrades over current tech, or are just useless and no one will want them.
I’ve been reading MacRumours forums since before the iPhone launch and it’s always the same thing regarding new products. Without using them, people can have an hard time seeing the positives. I think that issue is even bigger now with the Vision Pro.
Occulus sold more headsets than Microsoft sold Xboxes. And that’s 2021. https://x.com/JackSoslow/status/1471549480595955716?s=20
no, they werent. the ipad replaced the netbooks everyone wsa using until tablets became viable. again, an actual use case for a product.
theyve been pushing these headsets for years now, and theyve gained little traction and not solved any of the common problems.
anyone who thinks this is will some popular thing everyone will be doing is smokin the reefer, or just not paying attention
do you seriously think retail consumers are the demographic Apple is trying to capture right now?
talk to some creative professionals & craftsmen. my company used to work with hololens on a regular basis but there way too much jank in how it performed in a live setting. If the Vision Pro provides even the same level of utility but manages to make live object rendering & tracking consistent and reliable, they’re going to sell truckloads. Hollywood alone has probably 100 different ways to use this tech on set to slim creative workflows and save time (and therefore money). a $5000 headset is practically a rounding error when your principals cost 10x that per hour.
How is retail not their demographic? All the marketing for this thing has people sitting on the couch, watching movies, viewing their children’s photos in 3D, relaxation and meditation, taking photos with the headset on at a kids birthday, playing NBA 2K24, browsing news, spacial audio. Even the work stuff is pushing things like FaceTime and virtual screens. If retail consumers aren’t their demographic someone should let the marketing department know
nope, i think this will sellout to their core audience, the 1%s. its just funny many people think they are part of that number.
but my point is, this isnt a mass market device. its not a new ipad or iphone… this is an imac. a niche product for their niche audience.
even your example is hardcore niche and no where near an actual, large scale adoption
How have they been “pushing these headsets for years” considering that we’re literally discussing the launch of this product?
The giant thing on my head that’s spose to help…ar/vr…
This is unnecessary technical debt compared to what is already in place. It solves no current problem in my space.
But hey, maybe it will work for your niche use case
The iPad always made 100% sense to me. The first Smartphones were fun and just joyful to use for simple Tasks. A lot of stuff was managed at a system level and Apps and games at the time were genuinely made very well and were great to play / use. Also keep in mind that at the times phones were at best 4". So getting the same experience on a much bigger screen always made sense to me.
Its only now that people try to use these things as a laptop replacement where they fall apart. But i.m.o. that was never the point and people got gaslit by marketing to believe that using a tablet as laptop replacement is viable.
