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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.
Occulus sold more headsets than Microsoft sold Xboxes. And that’s 2021. https://x.com/JackSoslow/status/1471549480595955716?s=20
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.
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.
Oculus headsets are for gaming, mostly. There’s a rather humongous social and practical gap between wearing one of those in the privacy of your living room and casually wearing one outside in public. There never was such a massive gap for the iPad or whatever. Maybe if we were already used to the likes of Google glass, but we all know what happened to that one.
I’m honestly not laughing at zuck, at least not for this one. Besides not believing it’s not gonna catch on, at least not this first generation, I’m actively hoping it doesn’t. The world absolutely does not need people walking around in public with a dozen cameras attached to their faces, with LCD screens between their eyes and mine at all times. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that shit and I don’t want to get comfortable with it either.
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.
The thing is, I don’t want those replaced by a headset. I have a total of 5 monitors on my home setup, and I can’t see a reason to replace any of them. Especially with a headset that’s likely going to be uncomfortable, heavy and isolating. I just can’t see any case where a headset could be even remotely close to preferable.
A recliner would probably decrease my enjoyment of the setup anyways, as I much prefer a physical desk, chair and monitors.
When they get it down to rad sunglasses I’ll wear them everywhere.
I love my Quest headset, but I haven’t turned it on in 6 months. I don’t have time to be isolated like that without asking other people to make sacrifices for me so I can have that time.
I think the tech will be important in the future. I could be wrong, but when it shrinks down and becomes easy to remove isolation, I think people will want it.
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.
The iPhone had 2 interesting things going for it. Everyone had been begging for an iPod phone for years before this happened. Apple had been working on the iPad since the Newton failed and the iPhone was a combination between iPod phone and iPad.
All glass all touch screens were not a thing people thought they wanted before Apple made a really compelling (and pleasing) device.
AR has been a thing for years, but hasn’t garnered the popularity or utility that MP3s and phones ever had. QR codes being the possible exception and only since most phones handle them natively at this stage.
It’s possible that AR just hasn’t had a good enough UX to break the “cool experiment bro” uses imagined so far (because of screen/camera/movement limitations). It’ll be interesting to see if Apple has managed to revolutionize the experience enough to imagine new and more widely needed AR uses or not.
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.
Your confusion probably relates to your idea that people dislike the cost of Vision Pro, as opposed to any actual problems with the product. All those other products were expensive versions of things that existed already that people used.
VR has existed for 40 years (remember Tron?). The reason it never took off is because the headset sucks and gives you a headache after an hour. That’s basically it. People will buy most anything, but a headache is pushing it.
