The current tech available is just too clunky, slow, power-hungry, and expensive. And it just plain needs to look cooler than a weird pair of ski goggles.
Apple has some interesting conceptual stuff but in the end you end up using a lot of 2D stuff that gets projected in front of you. It's nice but not really that valuable.
The problem with the vision pro isn't that it's not good enough but that good enough content to justify the expense is lacking. It would be more popular if it were cheaper. But even the Meta Quest, which is a lot cheaper, has the same problem so far.
And it's a shame because Apple is perfectly positioned to solve this.
Apple makes mainstream and popular TV shows. Apple owns rights to broadcast sporting events. Apple makes custom cameras to film their promotional VR content. But apple didn't invest in "real" feature films or movies shot in VR natively. Apple isn't making "on the field" VR sports broadcasts. Apple even has more money than some nations to throw at this. They're perfectly positioned, but they're simply not producing enough.
Beyond direct content production, Apple has a huge developer community that could've been mobilized to make software. They should've thrown a dev unit to every indie app developer with halfway substantial sales. It'd only cost a few million, and they'd have gotten a ton more apps at launch, as well as probably doubled the initial userbase.
When I watch higher quality 3D movies like Bladerunner 2049 and Dune Part 1, it feels like I never saw them before.
A top tier prestige TV series in 3D 180-degree (270? 360!) immersion would at least make Vision Pro an indispensable toy to the tech loving moneyed class.
Also, more immersive environments. They really are wonderful for focus and meditation/escape.
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The other way to go, without breaking any banks, is keep making it more developer friendly. They could modestly increase demand for the current Vision this way, since developers can rationalize an expensive headset more than casual gamers.
Developers who use Vision to work, are more likely to experiment with its capabilities.
I.e. multiple Mac screens. Dragging Mac windows in and out of Mac screens. Better spaces management (location lockable, swappable). Improve smoothness of keyboard and trackpad behavior, Etc. More gestures.
They need to vastly improve the light shield & strap comfort. I made custom versions that are fantastic, with higher field of view and extra safety padding to match. Apple should do that.
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Those are all things that could incrementally increase demand now, while increasing the value and demand for future lower cost sets.
Not until there is an absolute killer app/use case for VR Software. Games that allow for player movement based on thought-input? Social hangouts that are seamless but also private (the groupchat cannot be spoken aloud!)?
We need better hardware too. Seamless AR/VR transition with featherweight hardware that does not induce motion sickness if put on or calibrated incorrectly all for $999.
Yeah we got a LONG way to go.
A bit of a tangent but as much as “the children” are terminally online, I get the feeling the GenX/Millennial product people have a slight misread on what that looks like.
Generative AI will help by making it much cheaper to generate 3D content. Current models are still very rough, in the future we will have text-to-HD 3D asset.
I think the vision pro exists simple to introduce the user interface. I don’t expect to cret anything with mass appeal with the vision pro. I want to experience the environment to experience it and see how the experience can be leveraged.
The physical form factor is a big hurdle. They may as well improve it by 10x before version 2.
"Sales of VR headsets and augmented reality glasses in the U.S. plummeted nearly 40% to $664 million in 2023, as of Nov. 25, according to data shared with CNBC by research firm Circana." [1]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/vr-market-shrinking-as-meta-...
How is that possible? Assuming an ASP of $333 USD (which is too high), this would be >70mio sold headsets?
This seems to be inconsistent with these numbers
Statista has about 11 million sold VR headsets sold last year. That's not mainstream, that's a niche.
These things follow a curve, for laptops theres steep drop offs at 3, 5 and 8 years.
98% of 3 year old devices
60% of 5 year old devices
5% of 8y old devices.
So you’d need to apply a sliding scale.
Macbooks feel pretty ubiquitous, you cant use the entire 33y run of Macbooks to imply that the demographic is an order of magnitude more than what the parent implied.
When it really became popular -- say Elvis gyrating those hips -- he alone sold 10 million records in a year. And critics then talked of it as a fad that would die out. Elvis would continue to record, continue to sell millions, but eventually - well he died, but rock 'n roll the idea, the genre lived on. In fact rock 'n roll songs were written about how it will always rock 'n roll in defience of the "fad" label.
And ~fifty/sixty years later, there are still rock 'n roll bands selling millions/records/year. Not Elvis but the genre remains. We can't quite compare records sales now anymore because physical media just isn't sold really anymore.
That "staying power" isn't something VR headsets have (yet). Laptops have that. Critics say that VR is a fad and I think that's more what they mean. They say more critical things as well, but that's sort of the gist.
Another example is the automobile:
“[Motor cars] have the appearance of a fad, and an extremely dirty, dusty, inconvenient fad… These crude impracticable machines are unlikely for many years to displace in the Englishman’s affection a fine trotting horse and a smart trap.” -- Anonymous Horserider
It's too soon to tell with VR headsets, but their limited capability, high price, and well: relative usefulessness seems not in their favor.
There will be always grumblers but they also often point out fads correctly. 3D TVs are a good example, I think. Or quadrophonic records.
Also, yeah, Apple is kind of niche in computer sales. Maybe not in very affluent parts of the US but globally less than 10% in desktop and notebooks each.
Also also - VR might be a growing niche. I'm not arguing that. Hype's over but apparently there is still growth.