I think a lens worth looking at that suggests this is a misstep is:
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Apple has only ever convinced people to bring a new device with them once, with the iPod.
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They realized that a wallet sized device that could playback your entire music collection would be a huge hit, and convinced people to effectively carry around a second wallet (plus headphones). This was the first and only time they convinced people to carry around a new device on a daily basis, and it was relatively easy since jeans had two front pockets anyways.
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Around the same time, cell phones started also filling the role of second wallet, for a period, some of us even carried around 3 wallet sized devices. Then the iPhone just combined two of them (eventually all 3 kinda).
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Macbooks / laptops, are basically just the equivalent of textbooks in our bookbag, iPads are just a fancier version of that book that can also work with a pencil. Apple Watch just replaced our regular watches. No other Apple product (or anyone else’s for that matter) have convinced us to carry a wholly new form factor of device around with us.
- The Vision Pro replaces … nothing … like the iPod it’s a wholly new device to carry with you, but unlike the iPod the form factor is not a natural extension or replacement of an existing form factor. The closest they come is glasses, and this is what I think Google Glass got right, they aimed at a form factor that could be worn like glasses all day without too much distinction, whereas the vision pro is more like a pair of heavy ski goggles. It’s a hard and uncomfortable ask to get people to wear it in almost any scenario.
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Even the iPod was entering an already established market (consider the Sony Walkman).
Although that is interesting… I found some stats and 385 million walkmans were sold over 30 years. About 10. Million per year. Another report claims 51 million VR headsets in the last 5 years or about 10 million per year… (I started this comment planing to be negative, but now I wonder if Apple is not hitting the market at just the right time…)
Why do you carry your laptop with you?
What is the purpose of the Vision Pro? Is it just a VR Headset? Then sure, it sits at home like your video game console. But paying $3500 for that is insane when you could buy a Quest and a gaming PC.
Or is it a work focused AR device like Apple is pitching, in which case, it should go everywhere your Macbook does, at home, at the office, on trips, etc. Hard to imagine people wanting to lug a bulky headset with them for those purposes.
I’m also getting at the idea that the true revolutionary moment for AR will be when we can use them and carry them with us everywhere, like watches / phones / wallets / glasses. Unlike the iPod / iPhone / Apple Wallet, Apple is releasing this well before that point.
If the AR floating windows/screens work as they advertise, then it replaces 1-2-3 screens, in whatever configuration you want them in. You connect it into a gaming PC and use the augmented floating windows as virtual monitors. Then use a mouse or whatever, it’s more about the windows.
Later you want to see a movie. Minimise all your virtual monitors and deploy a big ass monitor to watch it in a big screen, without moving from you comfy gaming setup.
I’ll wait until third party apps implement this feature and the price gets at least halved. I’m the only one I’ve seen that has mentioned this use case but I honestly feel like it has potential.
A heads up display that could overlay useful information onto the world around you would be amazing.
- Provide directions.
- Point out businesses that are hard to find in a crowded city.
- Give real-time measurements and placements for construction (this is already a thing).
- Pokemon Go
The problem is that the apple vision is huge and bulky. They need to shrink it down to the size of big nerd eyeglasses. Microsoft did the same thing with their whatever it was called. I played with it a few times at different tech demos. It was garbage from the start because it was heavy, uncomfortable, and the refresh rate was intolerably slow. Apple’s is a slight improvement in a few categories but it still completely misses the point of what AR should be.
I agree with almost everything you said except that the Hololens was pretty remarkable for the time and magical when I got to use it at work, tiny FOV and crappy refresh rate regardless. Walking around a normal cluttered open plan office, watching youtube in a web browser as it followed me, then pinning it to a wall, walking elsewhere and pinning some of our architectural models to tables and stuff, and then walking back around the building and them all still being exactly where I put them was a pretty wild experience. The Quest 3’s AR stuff still doesn’t feel quite as magical due to the distortion, lack of peripheral vision, and noticeable ski goggle feeling, nor does the world tracking seem quite as good (though I still think it’s impressive for a $500 consumer device).
The Hololens is also entirely limited by it’s choice of using transparent displays but that’s also what makes it safe to use in industrial and now military settings.
That’s not what Apple wants it to be or is advertising it as at all. They don’t expect people to be wearing it all the time when they’re out doing things.
It’s meant to be a supplement to laptops/desktops, then eventually a replacement (I don’t think headsets will ever fully replace traditional computers though).
It’s first and foremost a VR headset with really good AR and video passthrough. They’re not glasses. Apple just doesn’t want you to think that it’s VR because they’ve decided they always have to be “special.”
Why in the world do you think this is supposed to be a mobile product? Just because it can run on a battery doesn’t mean they intend for consumers to wear it around town.
My impression is that it’s for use in the home and/or office. I wouldn’t walk around town with anything worth thousands of dollars out on display and I think most people are similarly minded.
What purpose does a MacBook serve that an office from the 1980’s wasn’t equipped to handle?
AR devices in an office serve the same purpose as existing tools, but there are ways that they can improve efficiency, which is all the justification office tech needs. Shit, my monitor costs 2/3 the price of the Vision Pro, and an ideal piece of AR hardware would be immeasurably better. Meetings in virtual space would negate how much meetings suck remotely. Having unlimited screen real estate would make a huge difference in my line of work. Also, being able to use any area in my home or out of it with as much screen real estate as I want would be huge.
I’m not saying that the Vision Pro does all of those things, but it does some of them, and I’m 100% okay with it being the thing that introduces the benefit of AR to those without imagination.
Hell if I know, I don’t even know what all it can do. There are probably dozens of things it can do that all kinds of laptops can’t do though.
I don’t use 3D modeling for my work but I can see how a 3D stereoscopic display could be highly useful for scientific research, as those have been part of the high end Nvidia Quadro GPU feature set intended for scientific research for many years already. Those would be coupled with a 3D monitor, and that kit of 3D monitor and Quadro GPU probably already cost more than the Apple Vision does.
Basically I assume it can do all the 3D VR and AR stuff that laptops can’t do in general. Whoever needs that for their office work might buy it, but I don’t need one.
They’ve only (in this century) produced a new product people take with them once, iPod. Except for the iPhone. MacBook Air. iPad. Apple Watch. AirPods.
So you’re 16% correct, and falling.
It’s not about the product, but the kind of device. Before the iPod, people didn’t really carry around computer like devices with them in the pockets, did they?
Maybe you’ve heard of this device that plays music on tiny headphones, great for listening while walking. It was called a Walkman. Came out in 1979. By the time the iPod came out, there were plenty of digital music players; I carried a Rio Volt (CD-ROM full of MP3s), but the Nomad was the one CmdrTaco compared iPod to.
Many people carried Palm Pilots, Newtons, cell phones, pagers, portable games (GameBoy, Game Gear, Lynx), film & digital cameras. I used to carry so many gadgets. Sharp/Tandy PC-3 was a great little calculator/computer, so was HP-35s.
Apple’s done an amazing job of making vastly better versions (eventually, in some cases; I waited for gen 3 iPod with USB), and folding multiple things into a device, and competing with themselves. So now most of those devices are gone, and we just carry an iPhone (or lame knockoff). I have a bunch of portable game devices, which live on my desk because why carry them? iPad rolled over the MacBook for portable computing. And now Vision Pro is going to roll over that (in a couple versions, probably).
The “one-hit wonder” assertion just requires someone to have lived a cave since 2006.
I keep remembering the Apple Watch release in parallel to the vision pro’s release. The first Apple Watch was so awkward and had no real purpose other than an extra notification display. But over the years the Apple Watch found its footing through iteration and iteration and is now a great health tracker with a bunch of cool uses.
In 6 or so years the Apple vision headsets will be awesome… but so should competing VR/AR.
The difference is that the Apple Watch was not that awkward compared to actual watches.
It was the size of a mid to large sized normal watch, and it’s battery lasted roughly a day and could be charged overnight next to your phone.
The Vision Pro is not the size of a pair of glasses, you can’t wear it nearly as long, nor can you use it like them. It’s not asking people to replace an existing device with a smart one, it’s asking them to use a whole new thing.
I love the idea of having one of these to toy around with here and there, maybe watch a movie or browse spatial photos, but not for $3500. Fuck no.
They have a new commercial out. The dude falls back on his couch and makes the movie that’s sitting on his ceiling, bigger.
I was like ok that would be cool. Being able to watch something without having to face it, it faces you. But maybe in 10 years when it’s the size of eye glasses and lasts all day and we can have spatial cinema where you can move in between things. Then. Fuck yeah.
Honestly, this is why I’m hoping the Vsuon Pro doesn’t flop. It really feels like it could open the door to a new era. Of course, that’s still years away, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Better now than never.
Man that is one vapid piece of writing. VR is definitely a thing - there’s a whole market of devices, accessories and apps and experiences made for it. If your articles hinges on the idea of dismissing something that exists because you think it’s pointless then your article is reductive. Reductive posts on forums are thing but paragraphs of reductive reasoning is proof that some people need to touch grass now and then. I have no interest in Vision Pro but complaining that VR is pointless isn’t what I need to do to justify my lack of interest.
Only a billionaire would think people would pay $3500 to watch a VR representation of a TV. They seem to be promoting as a bulkier version of Google glass.
VR is an expensive product that causes nausea in a significant number of people. It’s something that can damage the eyesight of young people, so it’s not for children. Who knows if extended use can damage the eyesight in adults. Guess we’ll wait and see.
Metaverse was a failure because people aren’t going to pay to chat with people in a world of legless cartoon characters that looks like it was designed to run on a PS1. One of the big requirements for a social media platform is that it’s accessible for most of the day. I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg can throw on a headset when in his limo or when he’s on his yacht, or even when he’s in a meeting, because who’s going to tell him he can’t use that in the workplace? But for most people it means it’s a social media platform that’s only accessible at home and only if it doesn’t make you nauseous. And one that looks like ass.
They’re trying to pivot to it being a gaming platform, which it should have been from the beginning. But now were talking the video game business. How many AAA titles are going to be ported? Is a gaming platform that young people aren’t going to be allowed to use going to be successful?
There isn’t really a solid business case for these products. Sure maybe when the tech improves, costs come down, and they can get buy-in from video game studios for it, it might be a thing. But for now it is just another future-tech grift that impresses shareholders.
Sounds like you don’t know much about the VR market in general. It is actually a popular segment of technology that has been growing and improving for decades.
It’s not going away, and Apple may have the next level of the technology already on the market. IDK but I’m not buying one. I already have 2 other VR headsets that do all that I need. I play VR games on my Index system about 5 times per week. It has superseded my interest in almost all 2D games.
I also know several other people from young to middle aged who have VR systems and we all quite enjoy being able to make use of the tech.
You lost all credibility when you said
It is actually a popular segment of technology that has been growing and improving for decades.
Which you wasted no time before saying! VR is great and the idea the person your responding to is posing is stupid and misinformed.
VR has been tangibly growing / developing for a decade at best.
To me, this seems like a big misstep for Apple. Granted I’m no fanboy, but I’ve appreciated Apple’s design and products over the last few decades. This to me just seems half baked. And that’s not something I expected from Apple’s hardware. I personally don’t think I’ll ever wear a computer on my face for more than 30 minutes at a time. Even if the weight goes down dramatically, it’s just not a convenient experience. The last thing I need with my technology is more inconvenience.
Well less than 30 minutes at a time is good because the Vision Pro battery only lasts around two hours and you can’t swap batteries without turning it off.
You can do a lot of things with the Vision Pro that you can’t do with other headsets, but I don’t understand why anybody would want to manage their calendar events in VR, and it seems like there are a lot more things that you would want to do with the Vision Pro that you can’t. If it were really an AR device like a modern Google Glass it would make sense, but with that form factor and a battery life of two hours it can’t really become part of you like that.
Are you aware that you can plug the battery into a power source and use the headset for as long as you want while the battery charges at the same time?
You can, but few people will. It’s not the image Apple wants the device to have. In their promotional videos, the people are constantly wearing the headset and never plugged in.
I think it really comes down to what developers do with it in the next couple of years. If they don’t devise some really interesting and meaningful experiences unique to the headset hardware I think it’s a dead end product no matter how much Apple pours into it.
Not to argue with you, but was there ever a ‘failed’ apple product ? Genuinely curios.
Apple products were never really ergonomic, so having over half a kilo dragging down your face seems to be a normal continuation of their design language. The battery on a cable however and the outside-facing screen seem like obvious bad design decisions that just contribute to the unpleasant weight distribution.
And it tries to sell a VR device as an AR device without any real killer use case other than integrating it nicely into their other products. Alone from the tech it’s impressive. Their new R1 and M2 chips do great work and the price reflects how much effort was put into it. But that alone doesn’t sell the device.
Even the positive reviews were mixed and pointed out grave flaws.
In my opinion, for this to take off it actually needs to provide significant advantages for people to accept wearing a comfortable sensor suite plus computer on their head in front of their eyes. We haven’t seen any of this yet… from any product in the space.
I think something with this, too (and that you sorta hinted at), is that it doesn’t seem to provide any additional benefit to what we already get with the iPhone, iPad, Mac ecosystem. That’s an ecosystem with a huge and established user base. Obviously this could change as developers step in to do the heavy lifting, but… Will they want to? Is it a good investment to spend thousands of hours on an app that a fraction of users of an already niche product will use? I think it’s very telling that some of the biggest developers (like Spotify and Netflix) opted out of Vision Pro.
It’s going to take some very talented, very risk-tolerant developers to make a $3,500+ headset go anywhere. And as of now, Apple is providing very little incentive.
It feels extremely brute forced.
I would have assumed that they had waited until they had transparent displays that were better than everyone’s, or had some unique way of combining passthrough and normal cameras that were better than others, but they really just announced basically a Quest Pro with some 3DS displays slapped to the outside. I’m pretty sure everyone at Meta’s reality Labs division sighed a pretty big sigh of relief, I suspect they were all worried that it was going to be an iPhone launch where everyone at Blackberry realized they were working on completely the wrong tech, and instead they just witnessed them launch a fancy and expensive version of what they’re already making for the mass market.