I get that the thesis is that this version is the devkit etc, but viable consumer product status (read: enough adoption for the device to be profitable) seems very far away
He mentions a few short term use cases for the current hardware.
For example: Productivity on the go (A laptop with the headset for multiple virtual displays) and Live Sports.
> Apple Immersive on Vision Pro is a transformative experience in terms of video quality and its ability to deliver a real sense of presence. Watching a game in high-resolution VR has the potential to be legitimately better than a regular 4K TV broadcast by enabling hardcore fans to feel much closer to the action
Except almost universally, people talk about the screen display being “not great” for extended use as a screen replacement with dramatically lower effective resolution and blurring…
That's not what the reviews I have read had to say.
> The Vision Pro can produce a virtual external display for any modern Mac... The virtual display feels responsive and works with connected keyboard or mouse peripherals. The text is highly readable.
I don’t have any complaints about how the virtual display itself works—it’s great.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/i-worked-exclusively...
If you go to a sports event you are mostly buying the experience of being there, the energy of the crowd, the cheering all that stuff. The actual experience of seeing what's happening is not really better is it? That's why the stadiums have screens in them.
Replicating that experience at home is more like getting people around to watch a game together.
"legitimately better than a regular 4K TV broadcast by enabling hardcore fans to feel much closer to the action" sounds like it offers something new.
People who are sports enthusiasts have a proven willingness to drop thousands of dollars on large screen televisions, streaming services like NFL Red Zone, or thousand dollar Superbowl tickets, so the potential for sales is there.
Because that's not remotely true.
In addition, Apple already has it's shareplay tech that allows networked users to watch shared video, listen to shared audio, or video game together.
The technology to do this has been around for a while to has anyone tries. I'd certainly be curious to give it a go. I imagine there are some technical problems too, like if your team scores and you jump in the air and your view point stays still.
This did get me thinking if any sport might be better viewed in VR, and maybe games like pool, snooker, chess. Where you see the whole thing from one vantage point, and the scale is such that the 3d of it all would be meaningful.
> The NextVR acquisition is what led to the incredible Apple Immersive video format, which enables capture of 3D video in 180 degrees in 8K resolution at 90 frames per second, an absolute juggernaut format with 8 times the number of pixels of a regular 4K video. The best way to think of the new Apple Immersive video format is kind of like a new IMAX-3D, but the real magic is the fact that it’s projected inside an imaginary 180-degree sphere (horizontally and vertically) that takes over your entire field of view.
Vision Pro is the first VR headset that enables playback of 180-degree 3D video at what feels to the eyes like 4K quality.
"IMAX-3D" sounds much more compelling than watching a flat image on a television.
When you watch sports they have multiple cameras all over the place. Fixed cameras with long lenses, cameras that zip over the pitch, cameras on blimps, slow mo cameras and so on.
These cameras are so much better for enjoying sport that they put giant screens in the stadium so you can see what happened after a goal is scored.
That experience is never going to work in a VR system (beyond VR as a way to have a big screen available) because if you kept shifting the position and focus you'll make everyone very motion sick.
Why assume the viewer doesn't have a choice of viewpoint locations they can decide to switch between?
But prudish Apple will surely block that from happening. I don't really get why. It's a valid request and one where the technology really shines. I use similar content on the quest 3 and it's great but it would be so much better on something like the vision pro.
It's very obviously better to wait a little longer for a future version.
In its first week, Apple had sold 270,000 iPhones domestically.[47] Apple sold the one millionth iPhone 74 days after the release.[48] Apple reported in January 2008 that four million were sold.
It's a type of gadget that hasn't become widely adopted yet and the usecases and killer features are almost non existent compared to the iPhones phonecalls + web browsing, music, videos, notes and many others.
Really hard to gauge what success means here, but if we say that in a year it will sell 500.000 units, that's 1/8 of the original iPhone, seems ok, or maybe not?
Brunswick Corporation has a market cap of about 6 billion.
The first Apple Mac was $7500 in today’s dollars.
Armchairs are way over-indexing on price.
My impression is that it's going to fall in price in the next iterations though i agree with you right now it's not even targeted for the masses.
You're making a plenty convincing argument- why misclassify the device? It's a full computer.
If anything, the Vision Pro feels to me more like the original Mac: an impressive technological leap forward, with lots of interesting ideas about computing and UI paradigms, but also prohibitively expensive, and still underpowered relative to its lofty ambitions.
Notably, the Mac didn't really end well for Apple. Eventually we got the iMac and OS X, but in between was a decade in which Apple nearly went bankrupt. And I'm not really convinced the Vision Pro is as innovative or compelling as the original Mac was to begin with.
That's going to depend on what things you cared about. The original iPhone was heavily criticized for no copy/paste, no 3g service, no MMS, no physical keyboard, its absurd at the time $700+ price tag, carrier exclusivity, lack of subsidized pricing model and number of other things. Plenty of commentators thought Apple had widely missed the mark and had just launched a multi-million dollar folly that was sure to sink them any day now.
Citation needed. The 1st gen iPhone sold 6 million units over two years. The Nokia N95 (not a super mainstream device, but in a similarish price category) sold 10M. Other Nokia phones of the time period sold 100+ million devices. BlackBerry, LG, and Sony/Ericcson was in the tens of millions per device model.
Let’s not forget:
1. The iPhone didn’t support 3G, which essentially all other phones of a similar price point had
2. Was only available for AT&T customers in the US (then still known as Cingular Wireless)
3. Cost significantly more ($500-600 w/ two year contract) than the average consumer paid for phones (almost always under $150 with contract, but usually “free”) at the time.
4. No App Store
5. No cut and paste
6. No removable battery
7. No physical keyboard (a positive for me, but was a deal breaker for so many back then)
That’s not to say the original iPhone wasn’t amazing in many ways, but let’s also remember the past accurately.
Way more, especially since the original iPhone was only available in the US for the first 5 months. It was available across Europe, North America, South America, China, and Australia at minimum.
> I don't think it launched in Asia or most of Europe.
The N95 was heavily across Europe, that was the primary market for it in fact.
That said, there is sufficient evidence to support my claim made in my original post.
And yet people buy v1. It really depends on how much your time is worth. I bought v1 and I expect to sell it for $1000 or so when v2 comes out. $3000 to use this product for 12-18 months is totally worth it to me.
So, not “obvious”. At least to people with different priorities.
iPhone 1.0 was incredible. There was nothing like it. iPad 1.0 (and following) has been lackluster. AVP is impressive, but lacking.
The iPhone changed the world of tech in an instant. There were aspects lacking (slow internet, no copy paste, no third-party apps), but saying it sucked is rewriting history. The things you take for granted about phones came from that.
As someone who’s worn mine to watch movies on multiple flights, the problem is two fold.
1. The device is ridiculously hard to get into “travel mode” on a plane. Especially if the device was powered off previously and you have to enter a passcode. Each time the “tracking was lost” notification is shown it forces you to start over with your passcode from the beginning. Those who believe in better security than a four digit passcode are brutalized. Then just getting control center open and selecting travel mode (needing like five pinch operations) can be insult to injury. I can’t imagine going through that in economy in tightly packed seats. After going through that experience twice, I now insure it’s ready to go on the ground before boarding, but that’s also a hassle.
2. Wearing the device for the length of a movie is still a struggle. I have a ton of time on other VR headsets (which I also can’t wear comfortably for 2hrs), so this isn’t just a “getting used to it” thing. Unlike the previous problem, this one isn’t really solvable without different hardware.
That said, once the movie starts, it’s the best movie experience on a plane ever for the first 20-30min.
Too much to ask for the average user, but the problem can be mitigated by the individual.