Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnneville | Hacker News Reader

that's surprising to me but maybe it's just semantics. i haven't tried the Apple Vision Pro but from what i hear, the things it surpasses the quest 3 on are all what i consider technology features like display, tracking, passthrough, and interface. the things i like about my quest 3 over it are not what i consider difficult technology things, like the controllers, the games, and the integrated battery.

for me "better product" equates to something like "the better thing to buy" which includes cost, and for me the quest 3 is leading in category by a large margin.

View on HN

"Better product" is mostly subjective, to a degree. I think future iterations of the AVP are going to bring more value per dollar to the public than Meta's Quest or Rayban lines.

The hardware, as I see it, is mostly going to be similar between the two companies (except for form factor, where I see Apple absolutely winning). The consumer market (Apple got people wearing this thing on the subway; I have no qualms giving me eye tracking data to Apple, but I do with Meta and have worked on their recommendation algorithms as well) and the software quality/ecosystem is going to be what makes Apple win this. Meta always positions themselves as the Android of the headset market, which I believe they will be.

My point still stands: I love that there's competition here. If I get to see the laptop and phone be 'legacy' devices in my lifetime, I will be happy to have seen such a transition in technology.

Of course the $3500 have better tech than the $399 thing.

We still have to see what sellable product Apple will throw at us.

Actually I’m pretty confident that Apple may be onto something and that it’s maybe the "next big thing". But they’ll need to cut the price by at least half if not more if they want to bootstrap the market enough to make it the next iPhone.

Of course they could just market it like a high end spatial monitor but I don’t believe they’ll do : they need mass adoption if they want developers to create applications to sell on the App Store.

The real question is: What is happening right now?

The $3500 dollar AVP has just created an entirely new interface for people to interact with computers. There are developers that are working as I type this to get first mover advantage on a new surface that could be as influential as the shift to mobile. Numbers are low now (I read 10,000 subscribers from... the Verge I think?), but that's now, when we're debating the usability of the entire platform.

What is the app that will make you buy Apple Vision Pro 3 in 2 years?

> What is the app that will make you buy Apple Vision Pro 3 in 2 years?

I don’t know and I think, neither Apple. But I do think that, like the GPS embedded in the smartphone 15 years ago, AR is full of potential to change the world but we’ll have to endure a first generation of "10m high shit emoji & VisionBeer & smart small games" before someone finds out.

> I don’t know and I think, neither Apple

This is one reason halo pricing makes sense.

Apple isn't confident on use cases and feature set, and will obviously evolve into an AVc value model at some point.

So if there exist some people who will pay AVP prices, why not put it out there in the market, sell a few, kickstart their AR/VR software ecosystem, figure out how their customers actually like using it.

And then try for the knockout blow with the AVc, informed by that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com