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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

What will the non-Pro version not have, compared to the Pro?

The "eye passthrough" display is something that could be trimmed quite easily to get the price down. It's not like any other VR device has it.

This has passthrough

https://simulavr.com/

but I don't think it is as nice.

I don't mean projecting the outside world inside the headset so the user can see "through" it, that's a standard feature even on cheap headsets. I mean the display on the front of the Vision Pro which shows the users eyes "through" the headset so other people can see them, which is an awful lot of hardware to dedicate to a feature many users don't need.

It's an interesting question.

If you look at that Simula VR page there is a video showing a person working with the device at a coffeeshop and being handed a coffee by a waitress. I don't know what that waitress would think about the interaction, particularly she might not be so clear if the person wearing the headset is paying attention or not. Visible eyes on the outside of the device could make a big difference. I don't think you'd need a particularly high quality display for the outside, something cartoony might be good enough or even better than a realistic display.

> something cartoony might be good enough or even better than a realistic display.

Like a matrix display...

That waitress won't be so creeped out if she can see that the customer sees her. (And implicitly acknowledges her existence.)

It won’t be as “magical”, “delightful”, and “inspiring”.

I imagine when it launches, the 2024 or 2025 "Vision" will be equivalent to the Vision Pro announced yesterday, and the new Vision Pro will probably have 8K displays or something ridiculous.

I bet they (very slightly) downgrade a feature or two just to not piss off the people that already purchased.

I agree there is a lot of low hanging fruit which could differentiate consumer from Pro for the next generations.

The pro could increase the FOV (some mentioned black borders at edge of vision), increase refresh rate and brightness (some mentioned adjusting to room brightness when removed), reduce the weight and thickness with titanium (some mentioned unbalanced weight), have more private sound (I understand it is pretty noisy to the neighbors so you would currently need AirPod Pro for plane/bed use), increase the cooling system (some mentioned it is warm), get some sort of med-tech sensors (control with thoughts, detect stress etc), get back sensors (the AirPod demo of being passed by the bike seems it needs some sort of backup camera/360 video record options), get cellular features, get Mx Pro chip, and increase the front screen size. After that I expect outdoor waterproof Ultra models (The scenes of people twitching on couches compared to the iPod dancers flinging themselves around could not be more stark).

Many reviewers also mentioned getting their hair messed up making it unwanted in professional scenarios where sharp looks are important which is something to solve for a true pro model. I imagine corporate will want all sorts of usage data and screen sharing.

It won’t have a very high price, for one. Other than that, it won’t have screen resolutions as high as this, nor have as many cameras and mics as the Pro version. It may not have some features in the software either.

It helps to think about the “SE” models of iPhone and Apple Watch in relation to this. And it will have its own target customer base for which it makes more sense than the Pro.

At a complete guess, the non-pro model will arrive in around 2025. It will have the same M2 chip as the current one, and less or lower quality sensors/cameras, and maybe a cheaper and/or non-replaceable strap (I'd lean towards the former as selling extra straps will be something they'll want to profit on).

By the time it comes out the pro model will move to the M3 or M4. Storage will also be lower on the non-pro model, and you wont get the same level of sound quality (Which for 99% of people wont matter as they'll have Airpods being existing Apple users).

Apples historically launched pro products, and then when its ready for a performance and/or feature bump it's passed those old features down to the non-pro models. Think TouchID and FaceID for example.

They could remove the front-facing display and the camera/ability to shoot 3D content. Both strike me as non-essential for a base device geared around content consumption and basic work. The front shield then becomes a plain piece, and quickly differentiates a user from Vision and Vision Pro.

If they swap metal for plastic, the cheaper version would become lighter and that would be a selling point. They can't go with lower-resolution screens. Poorer quality headband would make the thing uncomfortable to wear.

Presumably they will wait and see how people use it in practice before deciding what is and isn't essential.

It's hard to believe that the screen on the outside is really necessary, but I'm sure it did well in testing or it wouldn't have been included.

Perhaps it makes it less likely for the user to be ostracized (for using the high-rent analogue of Google Glass).

It could be the other way: Vision Pro will advance faster (field of view, compute power, some new feature) and Vision will become a lower price point full of rad hand-me-downs.

It will likely be this version while the next iteration will take the “pro” moniker.

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