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Comment by ssgodderidge | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious to see the type of adoption here. I think this is more of an enthusiast device than anything. I suspect true success of the Vision Pro will be the introduction of a smaller, cheaper headset aimed at the masses, rather than wide-spread adoption of a $3k+ device

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I think adoption being limited because of price is useful here. If it was cheaper, more people would buy it and be disappointed. As it stands, only wealthy early adopters or die-hard Apple fans who can see them do no wrong will buy it. It selects for an audience that is less likely to be critical.

That is probably scarily true. How did it come to this.

Cause the features in this are the features that are needed to make this widely adoptable. Using the finger gestures instead of needing additional control hardware is key but expensive. Being able to switch between the virtual world and the real world seamlessly is key but expensive. The hope is that enough people hear about it and think it's cool that is forces the R&D to push down the price on this tech to be able to make it more widely accessible. Because without those kinds of features, AR/VR will always be niche.

> I think this is more of an enthusiast device than anything.

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.

well that's gotta be why it's called the Vision Pro and not the Vision, right?

Companies and institutions will be a big customer

With what use case, do you think?

Why can’t Meta Quest 3 be that device?

Because no one trusts Meta anymore. With anything. Reputational damage.

Also from the dev side the platform (which is Android with some AR bits bolted on) isn’t compelling enough to be locked into, even if the hardware is decent. If Facebook were to make a play to make their Android variant the Windows of AR and license it out to other manufacturers, that might work but nobody is interested in them trying to be Apple with Oculus stuff.

It’s so good though

It may be unfair, but no one thinks 'great hardware' when they think of Meta/Facebook. At best they think neutral, at worst they think about no leg avatars and online toxicity.

I think the pricing and marketing of Meta Quest 3 position it as a device that is fit for the general public. But VR just isn't good enough yet. The Apple device will also be not good enough, but because the average person won't buy it, the air of exclusivity will keep intrigue. Maybe in another decade, we'll have something really amazing.

Because that has additional hardware instead of using your hands and does not allow seamless transition between the real world and virtual.

Low resolution displays are okay for gaming but anything oriented at professional use is going to be held back by fuzzy text.

I think quest 3 is reasonably sharp so something sharper than that eventually will be pretty sweet.

Personally I’m more put off by the bulkiness of the device, something very light is necessary!

Text sharpness is really critical, IMO. Also, if text moves at all with any head movement, its a deal breaker

Because I distance myself from Meta as much as possible.

I'd buy the latest Quest in a heartbeat if it wasn't associated with Meta.

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