When the Apple Lisa debuted in 1983 it cost $9,995 (equivalent to $29,400 in 2022). The Lisa wasn’t a success but the personal computer was - I think there are some parallels to draw here
The Quest 3 offers many of the same technical points on paper, but it’s also not capable of many of the things the Vision Pro can deliver.
Whether that’s multitasking, or having a massive media+App Library, or having a warp free passthrough.
The products aren’t comparable anymore than comparing a budget/subsidized Android phone with a high end Android/iOS phone. They do the same thing, but the details matter.
The Vision Pro is nothing like this, in hardware it is a noticeable improvement to what already exists (but not that big compared to the latest gear in the premium segment) and the software is largely a copy of what already exists with no clear use case. You could say the eye/hand tracking is the killer feature but it has to been seen how reliable it actually is in practice and it doesn't enable any particular application. In fact, it seems obvious that for many things done in VR people will quickly need to associate some controller. All that at 3 times (at least) the price of the closest competitors.
The iPhone worked not because it was a magical innovation, but because it was the recipe that had all the right ingredients in the good proportions following the right cooking process; at a palatable price. Pretending otherwise is history bending.
But you can always wish and dream, I'll give you that much.
The AR functionality on current-gen gaming headsets is terrible, and the screen door effect is glaringly obvious.
What Apple is advertising blows the Oculus devices away. Whether the difference is worth the extra $3000 is a question that has yet to be answered, but it’s a category error to compare them directly.
Apple historically has been able to improve on current existing technology to deliver an experience that the rest of the industry had to catch up to, they aren't in the business of releasing completely new unseen product types since the 80s...
Only time will tell where the market goes with this one. Just concluding off pricing alone though, I think it's ridiculous to expect Vision Pro to be remotely as successful as the iPad or even the Apple Watch. Cupertino has their work cut out for them on this one, that's for sure.
The tech journalists who got an early look seem to think so. Obviously time will tell if this holds up under real world conditions.
I was a VR early adopter and have used the best consumer units available. The thing that always held it back for me was the obvious screen door effect and the isolation of these headsets.
Apple seems to have focused on both of these issues, which makes the device intriguing. Being able to immediately interact with the room in high fidelity will make a huge difference. The AR mode on the Valve Index is awful, but also really cool. If Apple delivers on half of the room AR, it’s a huge step forward.
And a lack of screen door effect makes it viable for real productivity use cases.
Also the software is much more restrictive. Barely any “flat” apps and doesn’t support the hybrid 2d apps with depth. Also can’t pin apps around a physical space. Some of that is coming but it’s clearly way behind in terms of software features. Which I’ll add lower latency streaming from other devices to as well
You could also connect them to a PC wirelessly and play any PC VR games that your computer is capable of running. It used to be a little more cumbersome to set up, but Valve recently released a native SteamLink app on the Quest store that vastly simplifies the whole PC VR experience.
I don't think their point was to suggest there are no less expensive alternatives.