I do hope this is successful. The cult-like behavior that Apple inspires may be the big push needed to help VR become adopted by the general public. If it fails, then I'd be pessimistic that VR will have meaningful progression in the next decade.
It's just not going to happen. The general public are not going to put this stuff on their face for anything other than short periods of time (if at all) and only for entertainment purposes (if they do at all).
You're not going to see general public families sitting on a couch watching a movie together with these things on their face. Joe and Jane Smith don't want this.
I think if there is a company that could really kick of mainstream VR/AR headset adoption, Apple probably has the best brand to do it.
That being said I have a Quest 2 with a couple years of accumulated dust in a closet, so who knows.
Just like the mediocre included earbuds with iPods were very popular even as a replacement or for other devices even though there were countless much better choices at the same price.
I owned AirPods and not only they are undeserving of the hype but for the price they are extremely mediocre and have a pretty big longevity problem.
People keep buying them because everybody knows how much they cost and how often you have to change them, which makes you part of a de facto well-off group.
The biggest Apple products might be the social engineering around their products but for this to work they need people to not be too aware, so I guess it will stay that way...
I feel like people who believe other people are buying Apple products merely as a status symbol, are projecting their own insecurities and thought processes onto others.
How can you be so sure about a company that makes a monitor stand that sells for $1000?
Don’t forget Steve Ballmer famously mocked Apple because he thought iPhones were too expensive at $500 a pop.
Today, Apple sells $1000+ iPhones.
Apple already knows how to sell “overpriced” consumer hardware since they have a $5,000 Pro XDR monitor and $1,000 stand to go with that “overpriced” monitor in their line up.
The monitor is not a hit so there’s no reason to assume that $3,500 Vision Pro will be an (instant) hit, since it was intentionally priced to be out of reach of many people.
I guess people assume because it’s Apple, or perhaps because of the amount of buzz they generated with the reveal for the Vision Pro, every product they make has to be a hit
It's already established that smartphones are a huge market, and people are willing to pay a lot for what for most people is their main computer. Android manufacturers like Samsung are also selling $1,000 flagship smartphones.
No one's claimed that no one is going to buy the vision-pro. But there's no demonstrated huge existing demand for an extremely high-end VR headset. It's unlikely that a product nobody asked for costing $3,500 is going to give the technology mass market appeal or kick off widespread adoption.
Your reply doesn’t disagree with what I wrote. At all.
At the end of the day, the $3,500 price tag is also a signal as to Apple’s thesis about how well the product might do on the marketplace. Their thesis can mean a bunch of things:
1. they think the device will appeal to a niche set of professional customers that have bought or have the ability to buy products in this price range e.g. customers of the high-priced $5,000 Pro XDR Display I mentioned. Their plan might be to grow the applications that Vision Pros can be used for, which will lead to increased demand among pro users which will in turn grow the revenue from this niche segment.
2. they don’t think there’s mass market appeal to justify selling Vision Pro units at a lower price (or at a loss like other companies have done by deploying penetration pricing e.g. Meta) as you observed. Again, their plan might be to grow the applications that Vision Pro can be used for leading to increased demand. The shiny new spatial computing tech that makes the Vision Pro exciting could slowly make it’s way into other products in their line up (or they could introduce a less capable edition at a lower price tag).
E.g. Spatial computing could eventually make it’s way into the next-generation Pro XDR Display monitors used in the office. Apple could also expand their presence in the home with a fresh take on home projectors in-fused with spatial computing, to complement their Apple TV product.
It will be successful in the price range where it is located. My guess is that it will even beat the sales quantities of the quest pro, a headset which is about a third of the price.
Apple will very likely have a "Vision" (non-pro) product after the technology test bed is proven, etc.
It’s not fair to compare to an iPhone.
I'd define success as paving the way for broader investment in the ecosystem. If third-party devs start building useful workflow tools and other experiences, it can become a cult favorite. From there, re-investment in further R&D can keep this improving.
Personally I’m more put off by the bulkiness of the device, something very light is necessary!
I'd buy the latest Quest in a heartbeat if it wasn't associated with Meta.
Of course it's a v1 enthusiast device. Not that it'll ever be as big as the Apple Watch or iPhone, but the v1s of those were also enthusiast devices.
I’m not expecting this to replace monitors for most people now. But next monitor upgrade, if you already work on a Macbook, it might be a better option than an external display for some people.
But...they aren't. People don't want it. What they want is a computer so light that it's always available. Most people seem to carry phones for consumption and sometimes lightweight laptops for work.
Busting out a portable wireless keyboard and putting on an HMD would be pretty neat IMO, if the HMD was good enough.
VR lets you swivel your head to get more real estate, but it doesn’t let you look at more pixels at once. Not unless you zoom out, which is what exposé already does.
But sure, you can strap a couple kilos of hardware to your face and take on that neck strain, disconnect yourself from the environment around you, and introduce motion sickness just to avoid pressing F3.
This is not true. VR gaming is something some people genuinely enjoy doing and paying money for. There are more than handful of VR gaming studios that can run healthy businesses based on this market.
I'm not saying that the Vision Pro will make VR replace laptops, someday it might, who knows. But suggesting that there is zero value from VR is also not true.
Apple is marketing this for general consumer adoption. What are those applications?
- VR meetings in my opinion feel better than 2D Zoom calls - but I don't see companies buying VR headsets for this purpose for their employees
- Education: There's definitely some cool stuff here, but hard to monetize I think (did something in this space a few years ago)
- Non-gaming entertainment, such as watching movies on big screens. This could be the next big area for VR after gaming.
- Fitness. You could count this as gaming, but specific fitness apps are really popular and I would define fitness as a separate category.
- Virtual desktop experience at least as good as a single 27inch monitor
- Doesn't make me nauseous or hurt my neck
- Isn't egregiously expensive (3,500 is pretty steep)
- Playing table tennis in VR is more fun than in real life since you don't have to go chasing around the room to pick up balls.
- I've used VR headsets to show my parents and other elderly folks photosphere shots I've taken from mountain summits that they would never be able to access or see in person.
- There are some VR games that are quite well received (e.g., Half-Life Alyx).
- Beat Saber is a blast.
I totally agree that where the technology is today, it's not ready for broad adoption. But as displays, materials, and capabilities expand, so too do the possibilities. We're probably not going to hit sci-fi levels of VR anytime in the next decade, but we can almost certainly create compelling experiences that go far beyond what exists today.
Being able to "summit" a mountain without actually being there is an interesting use case though. Thanks for that.