Audience collectively groaned at Apple's Vision Pro price | Hacker News Reader

Audience collectively groaned at Apple's Vision Pro price

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16 pointsthunderbong43 comments

I don’t understand the complaint on pricing. A camcorder in 1986 cost around $1900 in today’s money and it sold well. It was far less capable, far less elegant, and far more bulky. This device is a computer, camera, MR headset, and replaces monitors. I think $3500 is a very reasonable price given its specs and what it does.

Not only that, but a few years later it will be affordable for those specs.

The tech elite already have monitors, TVs, etc. and don't want to re-buy them.

I think your view is too narrow and short sighted. The tech elite had Blackberries, iPods, and laptops when the iPhone came out and didn’t want to re-buy them. They didn’t rebuy the the first two items but did buy iPhones. This is a similar situation in my opinion.

Yeah, I'm somewhere between "that's fucking expensive" and "if it can legitimately replace a monitor for hours on end, that might well justify the price."

I'll admit one sticking point for me is the lack of noise cancellation on the earphones. I'm sure that is coming, so holding off for a generation or two might be a good bet.

I think the noise cancelling will come from AirPods. If they can pull off noise cancelling from the headset alone that would be quite impressive.

Because, when it comes to consumer electronics, we have experienced massive deflation for the last ~50 years, to the extent that we simply do not expect to pay big bucks for any electronics. Spending more than $1000-$2000 on a gadget is way outside most people's norms.

Remember, the original Macintosh cost $6000 in today’s money, which most people would consider an absolutely ludicrous sum for a computer (of any kind) today.

Yes, that is true. My wife and I are childless. We could buy two of these devices and immediately get rid of our two TVs, sound system, and monitor. I don’t think I’ll ever buy another monitor, sound system or TV again. I doubt I’ll ever buy an iPad or laptop again either. I think there’s a big enough market for this device at the $3500 price point. Obviously I could be wrong. I hope not because I’m excited about the possibilities of this device.

Do you really want to "jack in" just to watch a movie or listen to some music? Isn't the point of a TV to relax on the couch, maybe cuddle with the wife?

I think a person can relax on the couch with the headset. Cuddling is an issue. I would much rather use the headset than a TV. For one, I can resize the screen as I see fit. One problem in my house is that my oled TV doesn’t do well in sunlight. I can watch a movie while seeming to be at any location I desire. I hate the idea of the electronics waste that comes with 70 inch TVs when the time comes to replace it. I don’t like the hdmi cables and plugs. I’d rather have less clutter. I like the idea of an all purpose, high quality media and internet consumption device that is small that will replace a lot of products that I currently have.

Do you ever have friends over to watch a movie?

No. When friends are over we play board games or hangout. If the device becomes as ubiquitous as phones or laptops then people will likely watch movies together apart. The concept of hanging out could possibly change. The idea of being present will evolve to a slightly different notion with the headsets.

Of course the headset could be a huge flop. But I think having a personal, portable holodeck is a hot idea.

By the way, I’m from the Canal Zone.

> I doubt I'll ever buy an iPad or laptop again either.

After seeing the Vision Pro marketing material, my first thought was about how antiquated it already looks to use a slab phone to do anything. The new iPhone/AirPlay/TV integration was like looking at an old tech commercial from the 90s.

I can't shake the feeling that blended AR+VR is going to be the next big modality, and Apple is going to make this market. A lot of people aren't going to like it, but it will catch on and come to replace almost everything else.

On another note, I suspect the Vision Pro is an important stepping stone to releasing an Apple EV.

COL increases have also far outpaced wage increases in recent decades... especially for people who don't work in tech.

I think given the amount of tech and at least presented level of quality of experience (which I do not doubt) the price is fine. I think the problem is it is $3,500 in search of a problem to solve.

A camcorder has a clear use case. It let you make home movies.

They failed to articulate the use case in a compelling way and every scenario I can think of is extremely hampered by the 2 hour battery life.

Business is out. Everyone outside Silicon Valley that can afford this thing will be rejected if they show up with a weird uncanny valley avatar to a meeting.

Travel sounds good, but 2 hours really limits it. You better have a seat charger and even then it must be pulling down how many watts? Will seat chargers on planes have enough sustained power to do more than prolong battery life?

Watching movies at home? Sure. If you are alone and you are plugged in.

What else? Weird VR computing and web browsing? The friction of putting on the headset is too much to make up for however good that experience is.

I think this headset has a clear use case. For one, it’s a way better recording device than what currently exists. With the headset appearing transparent it will not be too much of barrier to interacting with what you are recording. One can record the birthday party while interacting with the party in a way very similar to how you would if you had no device. Recoding a birthday party using a phone is much more dystopian in my opinion than using this headset.

Another use case is getting rid of monitors and freeing up space on a desk. I imagine in the future I’ll have a sever in a closet and the headset will allow me to get rid of my TV, keyboard, mouse, monitor, laptop, and Apple TV. My wife and I can each put on a headset and have customized picture/sound while synchronously watching the same show. She likes the TV to be a lot louder than I do.

I will be able to play board games with friends across the country and it will be as if we are all in the same room interacting with the game board. This thing would be great for online teaching or tech support.

That first bit sounds like a very hot take to me - the headset quite literally blocks and intercepts the standard human signals for attention and emotional response and then tries to recreate them on an OLED screen with a CGI model.

I can't see how that's better than filming on a phone, where although the eyes are looking at what's going on on the screen, their response is still clearly visible in the raw form.

A very expensive OLED… I’d be willing to bet the one piece front glass element costs Apple several hundred dollars each… and where anyone else would use standard lenses and optical windows over the tracking cameras, visual cameras, and LiDAR systems… because Apple were making the EyeSight feature a big part of the industrial design, they had to make it “come together”… they had to waste hundreds on a pointlessly rounded piece of ludicrously over complicated glass…

I made the joke that Apple probably put more time and money into the optical engineering and design of this overpriced ski goggles style one piece optical assembly than the cost of designing a space telescope (excluding mega projects like Hubble & JWST aside, of course) …

How far fetchedis the idea that facial expressions on the model could be manipulated to look negative/positive when the user is talking about something the software creators have different opinions on?

A person recording on a phone is not participating in the event. They are, for the most part, observing. Others may be able to see their expressions and whatnot but they are generally not interacting with the person doing the filming. It remains to be seen if people are willing to interact with someone wearing, what will appear to be, ski goggles. Apple may not have solved the issue but they clearly spent a vast amount of money/time/effort to make it so that interacting with someone wearing the headset isn’t too weird. We will see if they got it right or close enough to right.

It isn't transparent. It shows a digital rendering of you on the OLED screen facing outwards. And to me, it reeks of "Glasshole" yet again. It would be like someone having sunglasses inside, "can you please remove them when we're talking?".

I said, appearing transparent. Presumably, it’s been tested and Apple has found it’s not a repeat of the glasshole experience. Clearly they’ve put a lot of time and effort to make it so that interacting with someone wearing the headset isn’t too weird or unpleasant. They may have missed the mark. We’ll see.

Is it a better recording device? Do we know that? Everyone is going to hate the person that is wearing that thing during a birthday party. I remember how obnoxious camcorders were because they were so big and obtrusive. This feels worse.

Maybe this replaces monitors, but a lot of people work on their computer 8-10 hours a day. What does 8-10 hours with a headset on feel like? What do other people in your organization think of the uncanny valley avatar?

It doesn’t replace TV. You have to have a headset per person. And each headset costs 3X a good 55 inch tv? And each person needs to be plugged in to make that work. If someone comes over you have to say bring your own headset.

And the final example is a use case that will basically never happen. It is hard to get friends to coordinate over a normal game on Xbox or PlayStation.

I love Apple but this is just not a mass market device.

As stated, it does replace TVs for my household. Two headsets would replace two TVs, 2 sound bars, 1 monitor. When friends come over we play board games or hangout. I don’t watch movies with friends at my place. We talk about shows we’ve seen but we don’t watch together. When people come over it’s about interacting with them.

We will see whose vision for the future is correct. I don’t think your view is broad enough to see possibilities for how things can change and evolve. The criticisms I’ve read about the headset make me think of Ballmer laughing about the $500 phone or when he discounted the iPad and when he talked about Apple making a laptop without a DVD player. I remember people saying the iPad was just a giant iPhone.

This thing might flop but I hope it doesn’t because I’d love to get rid of TVs, sound bars, etc.

I hope it is awesome. I really do. I just have trouble seeing it become a mass market hit in the way I didn’t with any of the recent Apple device launches. I was on the optimist side for all of those. I project they sell 1-3 million per year, maybe more if they drop the price closer to $2,000. Ever breaking 5 million units sold per year will be tough.

My reaction to each previous Apple launch for context:

iPhone: "That is it. That is the future of all phones." iPad: "I don't know if it is for me, but they are going to sell a ton of those and it is going to replace the need for a laptop for a lot of people." Watch: "I want one, but I don't know I can justify it until it operates more independently from the phone."

Anecdote: My spouse said absolutely not when shown. Had a visceral negative reaction.

> For one, it’s a way better recording device than what currently exists. > Another use case is getting rid of monitors and freeing up space on a desk. > I will be able to play board games with friends across the country

These don't feel like strong arguments for regular people, honestly. Is anyone clamoring for better recording of their kids' birthday parties? People can play board games online already. Is the uptake not great for that simply because you can't see a virtual avatar of your friends? I have a single monitor on my desk and I personally am not hurting that it's using up desk space. It's just not a real pain point.

All of the use cases Apple presented in their promos are undeniably neat, but nothing jumped out as something that solves a real problem I have. Maybe I'm not their target market, though.

I like Ford’s statement: If I asked people what they wanted they’d have said faster horses.

Before the iPhone people had phones and iPods and laptops. Nobody was clamoring for a small portable computer beyond what Blackberry provided. Nobody was clamoring for online gameplay before the internet.

> Nobody was clamoring for a small portable computer beyond what Blackberry provided. Nobody was clamoring for online gameplay before the internet.

No offense, but I don't think these are accurate. When Doom came out in the early '90s, it famously offered network gameplay via modem. I remember when the first Warcraft came out, playing it with friends over a modem. Multiplayer gaming over the internet was clearly the next step (playing with random people around the world is huge compared with just playing with people you know).

Also, when the Blackberry came out, I do remember PDAs being a big thing at the time, so there was already a market for portable devices and people clearly liked having portable digital electronics, and one that allowed you to go online and view the web with desktop quality was a major benefit.

My main view of Vision Pro is that it doesn't provide revolutionary functionality since so much of what it's offering already exists in ubiquitous fashion today with all of our smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. It's providing a new way to interface with apps, sure, but we're not going from a world of no ubiquitous tech to ubiquitous tech/internet like we did with smartphones. I think for this to be successful, Apple really needs to show value that is so beyond what we can do already, otherwise it'll remain a novelty for tech enthusiasts who enjoy trying out new experiences.

Going from a horse to a car is a huge leap since you can now move faster or further than you ever could. It opens up the world to you. Going from looking at a phone in my hand to looking through goggles at virtual screens doesn't feel to me like a huge leap in day to day functionality.

The internet existed in the 90s so referencing Doom is not apt as it pertains to my statement that before the internet no one clamored for online gameplay. There was a market for PDAs at the time of Blackberry and no one was clamoring for something much better. And the market for small portable computers is now orders of magnitude larger after the iPhone than the market for PDAs was ever going to be with Blackberry type devices. No one clamored for a device without a keyboard.

Great products don’t have to answer a need people think they have. They can create the need.

My parents bought me a $2,500 PC in 1995, which is $5,045.96 in 2023 money.

I feel like I’m part of the small majority thinking that it’s a reasonable price. It’s the first generation of the product so I’m looking forward on seeing how it changes in the future.

It costs 7 times as much as a Meta Quest 3, for that you get:

1) double the resolution.

2) better (perfect?) passthrough (not sure how good it is on the Quest 3, apparently a lot better than the quest 2 which was pretty bad).

3) native hand tracking. This is again in beta for the Meta Quest, and I expect apple to do it better but again how much better is the question.

4) A front screen to show your eyes: this is ridiculous and I don't know why anyone would care enough about this feature to pay for a high resolution curved screen on the front of the device to enable it. If it's a short conversation you don't need to see my eyes, if it's a long conversation I'm taking the thing off. Technologically impressive but feels like a huge gimmick.

To point 4, I wonder if someone did the pros and cons and decided it was worth it. Imagine sitting around a table with several people "jacked-in" to their own headsets (e.g. all in a conference with the Berlin office), but you want to converse quickly with someone in the room - hah your camera will then be looking at Janice's front screen and this will be considered eye contact (although I guess it's not much different to a Zoom call).

Looking forward to someone writing an app that tracks faces near the device and fakes giving them attention...

With face tracking and 4 people wearing the headset you could just put them anywhere in you FOV if you wanted to, no need to pass through and see physical screens showing a face through two levels of camera + screen.

The whole point of VR is it's immersive, what "immersive" activity are you doing while also holding a conversation? The use cases are at odds.

Sure I can imagine edge cases where it's kind of cool but I would pay exactly $0 for this feature if it was optional.

I dont think they wanted VR - they wanted AR.

That is a pretty small use case to rationalize having an expensive, power hungry OLED screen on your portable headset. Also, it doesn't directly show your real eyes, it's a digital rendering of your face+eyes, using the eye tracking for showing where you look. Don't know how it gets all the small facial expressions though, or if it does that at all.

It's smart. 1: it will fund the product, 2: you only get rich people and youtube fans talking it up (price-quality heuristic bias), rather than regular consumers talking it down, and 3: when the price comes down (inevitably when they release a non-'Pro'), everyone will clamor and that thing will sell like hotcakes.

I will say this: If you can plug that thing into a PC and use it like ever other PC headset they will have a lot more people interested. They don’t even have to advertise the function. Just make it something that works.

It will take a 4090 to push the 8k+, likely 120hz +, but it would make it a lot more of a compelling of a product at launch.

Heh, sounds like Apple's "Magic Leap" moment. ;)

It seems to be almost 3x the size of something like the 'Bigscreen Beyond.'

and its iterations are only going to get more expensive.

The “Pro” in the name is a clear (IMO) signifier that this isn’t the mainstream consumer edition of the Reality product line. It’s for developers, for enterprise and military evaluation, and for early adopters who want a bleeding-edge experience. A sub-$1,000 non-Pro edition will be available in 2025, maybe sooner.

My fetish is listening to and reading complaints about how Apple prices their unnecessary luxury goods.

The next year is going to be glorious.

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