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Ok, but $3,499 is a steep price tag. Granted, the pixel density and design look amazing. They are probably the absolute best VR/AR goggles on the consumer market to date, but to try something out and totally shift your computing habits at that steep of a tag is going to be a stretch for a lot of people.

Like it might be worth it if you really are able to replace your standard monitor setup and use these for long stretches with out neck or eye strain. But how will you know until you try?

I saw someone say elsewhere, these are not for consumers in general. They are for developers to work with, build software for, come up with new things… then, if and when a niche is found, they’ll probably make a much less expensive consumer model that focuses on that use case.

That being said, I would love to try these, but I’m more interested in an upgraded laptop at the moment, and that money would buy a nice one.

The original iPhone cost so much people mocked it. It costs twice as much now and people buy them for their 8 year olds. If the device provides enough utility (and I imagine down the line these will replace laptops, tablets and TV’s for a lot of people), the price won’t matter.

Exactly this. I know Apple didn't invent VR/AR. But they also didn't invent the phone. What they did do though is provide an amazing user experience for the vast majority of people.

I've been on the AR/VR hype train for a long time and have had many different headsets over the years. Apple Vision Pro seems like it puts all of them to shame. And if Apple can execute on this, no doubt, it'll become a household staple. And this is Gen 1. Price will come down. Apple has to get the experience right though. And so far it looks promising.

> The original iPhone cost so much people mocked it. It costs twice as much now...

The original iPhone models were $499–599 only WITH a 2-year AT&T contract, so that price was heavily subsidized.

The current iPhone 14 range is $799–1099+ for the base configs with no contract, but these are unsubsidized prices.

(The base model iPhone SE is only $429 today.)

Apples to oranges comparison.

Carrier and retail subsidies still exist. It's just that they're no longer the only way to buy an iPhone.

> The original iPhone models were $499–599 only WITH a 2-year AT&T contract, so that price was heavily subsidized.

Untrue. Sure, you bought a phone that was locked to AT&T, but you didn't need a contract, and jailbreaking was a thing quickly....

Source: ya, I bought the first one before moving to China, paid $499 for it, and unlocked it before I left the shopping mall (University Village in Seattle) I was at.

> Untrue. Sure, you bought a phone that was locked to AT&T, but you didn't need a contract, and jailbreaking...

I bought the first iPhone as well.

Not sure why you mention carrier unlocking for international travel or jailbreaking — two things that are completely orthogonal to the subsidized contract terms.

I would encourage you to check your memory. Maybe you paid a higher price to not have a subsidized contract, or maybe you broke your contract, etc etc; in any case, the contract being 2 years is very well documented:

> The iPhone was released in the United States on June 29, 2007 at the price of $499 for the 4 GB model and $599 for the 8 GB model, both requiring a 2-year contract.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation)

https://www.macworld.com/article/183052/liveupdate-15.html

> The original iPhone reached the market on June 29, 2007. In the U.S. it was priced at $499 and $599, for 4GB and 8GB models, respectively, along with a two-year contract with AT&T.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/29/the-story-of-the-...

> iPhone requires a new two-year AT&T service plan.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/06/26Apple-and-AT-T-Anno...

> I would encourage you to check your memory. Maybe you paid a higher price to not have a subsidized contract, or maybe you broke your contract, etc etc; in any case, the contract being 2 years is very well documented:

No no, really, lots of people bought them without contracts, even from AT&T stores, at the subsidized price. I think it was the way Apple and AT&T were selling the iPhone: you paid the money, the phone was locked to AT&T's network, so you could only get a contract afterwards without jailbreaking. They "required a contract" but it wasn't done at the same time you bought the phone, so you could always skip it!

This was in the early days of the iPhone, just a few months after it was released (I bought mine in October 2007). They closed the loophole a few months later. My memory is pretty accurate on this one, since I actually bought the phone at University Village (for $499?) and was using it in China a week after I bought it.

The original iPhone cost so much people mocked it

Some did criticize the launch price, $499(8GB)/$599(8GB), even though it was right in line with the other smartphones of the day (e.g., Treo). But Apple discontinued the 4GB, and lowered the 8GB price by $200 to $399 just two months after launch. At that point it was not mocked, and that price really helped drive it into the mainstream. I'd say Vision needs that level of price slash to even be niche successful.

That price was subsidised. Actual price (unlocked, on ebay, etc) was around $1200.

There was no actual unlocked price for the first iphone because there was no official unlocked phone, and only way to buy one was through AT&T. A $1200 on ebay is paying for the phone + hype + an unlock hack. The first unsubsidized, direct sale iPhone from Apple was the 3g, and the 8GB version was only $499.

This says it 3G was $599, which still feels cheap now. Biggest jump was went it went from 8 to X, whopping $300 jump.

https://venturebeat.com/mobile/iphone-prices-from-the-origin...

I’m not mocking it, I’m pointing out that the price tag is high-enough that there might be a very slow uptick in adoption. Slow enough, that they don’t have enough people trying it and creating a newish market segment.

Maybe I’m wrong, we’ll see.

This is Apple. They sell $1500 laptops with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. $3,500 is cheap in Apple $$s.

As someone knee-deep in the Apple ecosystem, no, $3,500 is not cheap.

$3,500 is a top of the line MacBook Pro.

That's fine, but this is not a MacBook Pro.

> design look amazing.

I'm no Apple hater or VR hater, but am I the only one who thinks that the design of this thing looks utterly ridiculous? It's a scuba mask.

At best, it's looks marginally less ridiculous than its competitors (which might be all that it needs to be), but I don't see anything about it that looks amazing.

Sure, $3,500 is too steep for this to be a mass market hit with v1. But I think it's a fairly reasonable price to get the ball rolling, and they will see a fair number of early adopter consumers (much more than Google Glass or Magic Leap, less than Oculus).

I remember admiring flat screen TVs in the early 2000s when they cost like $10k: https://www.applianceretailer.com.au/eeqycmzusg/

I also used to have this SGI 1600SW monitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW. 1600 x 1024 17", $2,500 (equivalent to $4,490 in 2022)...

And yet it is possible that in the alternate history where apple had not done those things, tech might be better. Note that they all came out during the booming times of the 2010s with cheap money for consumption.

For example, the Samsung S10 had a headphone jack, an SpO2 meter (who knew we wwould need this in the pandemic!), an FM radio, great screen, lightweight. Their newer models have no jack (to sell more wireless earphnes), no spo2 (to sell more watches), no fm radio (unknown reason), and its heavier. The perceptible difference in performance is miniscule despite all these years. So , some changes do need to be ridiculed

That said, i dont see this headset in a similar league, this seems an experimental prototype because none of the use cases mentioned have been proved.

Nitpick: the lack of the FM radio stems directly from the lack of headphone jack - the radio relied on wired earphones to work as they were used as an antenna.

So losing the FM radio is more a consequence of the decision to remove the headphone jack, rather than an active decision to remove it.

Still sucks, though. The FM radio was one of the most useful features of my previous phone. By the time I upgraded to a newer phone, its battery lasted for an hour at most during normal tasks, but I could get 12+ hours from the FM radio.

There are now very few phones that have my personal "wishlist" of removable battery + headphone jack + FM radio. And these are all budget phones so if you value a decent camera, you may be out of luck. Add 5G and I'm not sure there are any options.

> Add 5G and I'm not sure there are any options.

Yep. And I literally couldn't care less about the camera.

All of that (plus my #1 issue of security concerns) are why my current smartphone will be my last smartphone.

> it is possible that in the alternate history where apple had not done those things, tech might be better

This. I think Apple has actively made the cellphone space worse in a number of ways, from removing the headphone jack through eliminating user-replaceable batteries. When Apple does a thing, everyone else takes it as permission to do the same thing.

> I feel like its shrinking steadily among younger people as the need for a time teller is replaced by the modern cell phone.

https://www.apple.com/healthcare/apple-watch/

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207934

They’re not making those arguments now, they’re quoting other HN comments from years ago as contrast to the negativity today.

There’s a few comments like these that people are posting in the big apple vision post as well.

I’ve seen this reposted a bunch. Is it really adding anything to the conversation being repeated verbatim?

Yes. People have been wrong in the past.

Hey, I went into HN search myself to pull these quotes! It was actually quite fun, I recommend scrolling the old threads.

In all seriousness, I think it is helpful context that people have ridiculed every Apple product launch since the iPhone.

So you are suggesting that Apple can do no wrong and therefore we shouldn't criticize any of their products? And you believe you are positively contributing to this thread?

Doesn’t seem like they are suggesting that apple can do no wrong. Just pointing out that this is similar to other major Apple announcements. I found their contribution interesting, I’m not sure why you feel the need to be hostile about it.

Because I see the same comment on every single criticism of Apple product announcements, basically implying that Apple isn't capable of doing wrong and that any criticism will just be in vain.

The passive aggression is ugly, it's not a healthy environment for discussion and (as the kids say) simping for a massive company is just plain disgusting.

Similar to the Newton launch too. And quite a few of their "revolutionary" laptops that ended up being expensive duds.

Of course, Apple have had some bombs. And it is instructive to look at them and assess where they went wrong versus the the times they were right.

But the commentary that happens every time they launch a new product is not very predictive of success.

It's a perfectly valid counter to all the people who posted today, on day zero and months from getting any hands-on time with the Vision Pro, that it must surely be destined to failure, and even worthy of ridicule.

I feel like the people at Apple (and similar companies) are pushing their imaginations and very obviously taking a huge risk, whereas all the nay-sayers are just sitting comfortably in the boundaries of the world as they understand it, and passing judgement accordingly.

I have no idea if Vision Pro will succeed, but as a technologist, I'll spend today thinking of ways it might surprise me for the better, rather than the ways in which it may fall short.

> whereas all the nay-sayers are just sitting comfortably in the boundaries of the world as they understand it, and passing judgement accordingly.

How would you expect progress to occur? Company releases a product users criticize it and make fun of it company/competitors either drop the idea or come up with an improved version. What's wrong about that? Why would anyone care about hurting a massive corporation's feelings? Let's not anthropomorphize them...

> just sitting comfortably in the boundaries of the world as they understand it,

Well it's pretty clear that Vision Pro is very expensive and has no clear use cases. And most criticism is almost entirely focused on these two aspects.

> I'll spend today thinking of ways it might surprise me for the better, rather than the ways in which it may fall short.

So instead of thinking of ways how something could be improved you'll just try to figure out how to make the best of what you have? Best approaches are perfectly viable and reasonable depending on the situation.

The critiques that I find unhelpful (and, disappointing for anyone who would claim to love technology) are the simple "This is just a useless device for watching Netflix and that's stupid."

This is obviously a very challenging value-proposition. No one is confused about how risky this is. It was undoubtedly on the Apple chopping block many many times.

But I find it infinitely more useful when people see a challenging problem and push themselves to think how it might possibly be useful, over what seems to be just quick and obvious dismissals.

It dates to at least the iPod! https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026

Probably earlier: I remember people mocking the colorful iMacs. I’m sure you could dig up some pc magazine articles from the 90s dunking on the iMacs and iBooks :).

You might want to make it clearer that these are quotes by prepending '>'s. At least to me, this wasn't clear at first.

That being said, I think it is interesting context to remind people of the immediate reactions to the other Apple launches of the recent past. Especially the headphone jack hits home for me, because I'm still a huge fan of the 3,5mn connector, but it fairly quickly became clear that the early widespread stance of 'I'll never buy a phone without a headphone jack!' soon turned into a somewhat lonely fight.

>You might want to make it clearer that these are quotes by prepending '>'s. At least to me, this wasn't clear at first.

That's actually exactly the reaction I was going for.

I've still never owned a phone without a headphone jack, and I never will. I do also use bluetooth in some situations, but wired earphones work much better, with greater reliability.

They're not even wrong about the headphone thing.

So why are people still writing “Apple’s entry into this new product category is doomed because it does not meet my personal expectations for the category” articles without discussing the outcomes of previous doomsayings?

Perhaps the headset deserves ridicule and will fail. Given Apple’s track record, perhaps it would make sense to acknowledge their many successes with products people dismissed, and explain why this one is more similar to their failures that people dismissed (Ping, anyone?)

That people have been wrong before for other products in no way comments on or invalidates what they're saying now about this one.

All it says is predicting the future is incredibly hard and all predictions (the ones predicting success as well as failure) are without much weight.

I don't think Apple predicts the future as much as it drives the future. Just my opinion.

Every product a company makes is a prediction that the product will succeed (if they didn't think it would succeed, they wouldn't make it).

This applies to Apple just as to every other company. It's not like Apple hasn't had product failures, after all.

tbh the real question is not the output (whether this succeeds or fails), it's whether Apple followed the same inputs that made prior products category-defining like Apple II, Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Airpods. All of those took niche computing ideas and made them mainstream, creating a new market and new way of life, and did so by following a playbook of timing the tech right, scoping narrowly, and understanding which use cases were worth targeting.

I wrote about some of these input factors in my post on category defining products a few years back: https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining-products/

Personally, I feel Vision is a bit too broadly scoped for a v1. 3d photos really didn't need to be in there. The consumer use cases that Apple loves really aren't where Vision is providing next level value add, whereas the remote workplace ones are. But I understand those alone are not enough to drive adoption so I can see why they wanted to make it more consumer oriented.

My hunch is they pivot slightly toward workplace in subsequent versions, much like they did with Apple Watch pivoting toward health and away from luxury.

Don’t seem entirely comparable in that both watches and iem were legitimate markets to which Apple brought an innovative products while AR and VR headsets are a notoriously difficult market where plenty of products have already tried and failed to make money.

If this succeed, to me it will be more akin to what the iPad did than to what the watch did.

It’s also extremely expensive. I’m curious to see how Apple will market it. We will see.

> It’s also extremely expensive

I assume it's more of a prototype targeted mainly at developers and enthusiasts at this point. They're probably betting that by the time they can decrease the price significantly somebody would've figured out what can you actually do with this thing.

Yeah. Apple enters categories that already have product-market fit. It outsources market research to first movers.

VR has only significant traction for a handful of games. iPad is indeed an exception while watches and fitness trackers were popular and a growing market before Apple entered.

I think this will be quite successfully marketed as a status symbol.

Obviously, it was intentional to create a scenario that there are viral videos of people gasping at the price reveal.

I do think this is a revolutionary day but in a totally dystopian way. I suspect this is the start of where the tech innovations are more and more not going to be targeted at the mass market. The mass market is financially tapped out. The future is what Bernard Arnault and his 200 billion dollars figured out a long time ago. As AI starts to make society more and more unequal the money will be more and more in the high end luxury products. Everyone else can eat cake.

At first when I read this I didn't understand that they were examples of people predicting the failure of newly launched apple products. I was nodding along agreeing with each point. I have used "smart watches" and "ear buds" (admittedly not apple) and got bored with the watch after I learnt nothing that suprisingly or actionable, and continually lose ear buds, or have them go through the wash.

But perhaps I am turning I to an old man?

Is the Apple Watch a success?

43% of all smartwatch shipments in Q4 2022, so I'd say yes.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartwatch-shipm...