The iPhone was subsidized by mobile carriers and/or interest free payment plans. I don't see that same path for this VR device, but maybe I am missing something.
Completely untrue. The original iPhone required a 2-year contract with AT&T/Cingular. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation)#Releas...
The contract issue had more to do with how the phone interacted with the network. IIRC, AT&T was an exclusive provider because of the backend requirements (visual voicemail notification maybe?). I assume the contract was in part because they wanted to recoup those expenses.
Here’s a news article from the time that says that AT&T didn’t actually start subsidizing the phone until the 3G arrived.
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/phones/2008-07...
Also, the subsidy might have been from Apple, if anyone… Apple got a kickback of $10/month per iPhone user. They might have used that to keep the price lower, but that wasn’t from ATT’s side of the account until the 3G followup.
The original parent post claimed that it did and implied that this was the reason why it was so successful. They also implied that the new Vision Pro would need similar subsidies to be successful.
I’m not quite sure the killer feature is there yet for VR headsets. But if the usability is better for the Vision Pro than the Quest, et al., it could still be successful, regardless of the cost.
That's completely untrue. The original iPhone DID NOT require a 2 year contract, you could absolutely buy it on a prepaid plan. Yeah, you had to "fail" the credit check to get offered the prepaid plans, but all you had to do was put "999-99-9999" as your SSN in the activation screens to get them.
Also it was a totally stand out appealing device accessible to everyone with immediate value to everyday people.