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Comment by Panini_Jones | Hacker News Reader

I would be surprised if the price dropped. I believe Apple is known for keeping their pricing fairly neutral or increasing it. You could get a Gen 1 second hand, though.

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If there's not a sub-$2,000 version of this thing in 18 months, it's going to get put in Apple's attic alongside the Newton and G4 cube.

Essentially no consumer is spending $3,500 on a single tech purchase anymore. That price point is just way too high for anything but niche business use and I just don't see Apple being willing to settle for that niche.

Unless they can deliver a totally game-changing experience imo. And so far it looks like they have the best VR/AR headset on the market, but will that be enough, remains to be seen.

Like if Apple is able to provide such a good experience, that I don't need multiple monitors for work, I could easily justify that purchase. But it would have to have great battery life, support virtual screens, provide a fast and smooth experience, be super comfortable even after 6-7 hours, etc. I don't think Gen 1 will check all those boxes off, but gen 2-3-4, maybe.

> unless .. game-changing

I have been silently dismissive until seeing a c.a. 5 minute ad on YouTube last night. Now I would be interested in at least trying the experience. However, I am wondering if the sales video might be better rendered (or somehow more impressive?) than the VR/AR itself.

Right, unless it replaces another $2000+ device, it's pretty hard to get mass market adoption at a $2000 price point, let alone 2x above that all-in.

The market for $2000 laptops is decent for example, but this thing for productivity use cases still needs you to own the $2000 laptop to connect to!

Cameras have moved higher end as the market has shrunk, but there still aren't that many of us buying $4000 cameras.

Even inflation adjusted, this is about 3x the intro iPhone price. Mass adoption followed when the price got cut 40% and they worked out subsidy & financing with the carriers so optically the price became 80% lower.

There’s at least 180,000

Apple sold 200 million iPhones last year.

If there’s any company capable of raising the overton window of tech pricing it’s apple. The price of AirPods Max seemed like a joke when it came out, but I see them everywhere.

Yeah they did do a great job of taking headphones/earbuds from throwaway freebies to $100-$200 must-haves and then pushing that to $500 with the Max. Although the Max certainly isn't a must have for most people.

I just a hard time believing that $3,500 is the price point they have in mind for VR stuff. In my own head, I had decided to insta-buy if it was $2,000 at launch and I wasn't even close.

Apple introduced it as the "Pro" model which is the high end line in apple-parlance. I'd expect a future non-pro model to slot in under it with all the essential features.

I also wouldn't be surprised if the Vision Pro eventually retails for $2999 instead of $3499. Today, it's a relatively low volume product and I'd expect costs to fall when Apple makes a push for a larger market

> I would be surprised if the price dropped.

I wouldn’t, especially under Tim Cook.

> I believe Apple is known for keeping their pricing fairly neutral or increasing it.

For the flagship product, sure. But older generations get discounted. The iPhone 15 is out, yet they continue to sell 14 and 13.

It also depends on if they will refresh it every year. The AirPods Max came out a while ago and the price still hasn’t dropped.

Early buyers of the original iPhone got money back like six months later when the price was cut. I believe around $200

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