edit: That said I'm reading now that the early reports that Apple downgraded their expectations for year 1 from 800k units to 400k units after launch were wrong, and instead they were always projecting 400k units.
The iPod was nice because of the storage, but competitors (like Zune) had more storage and were cheaper. It took a while for iPod to get "good" and gain adoption.
The iPhone was closer to the Vision Pro. It was obviously a revolutionary product, but it was extremely limited, and it took several OS versions before it got to the point where it was really ready for mass adoption. The iPhone 3G or 3GS was probably the first one that really got traction.
I use my Vision Pro every day. It's far from perfect, but it's been valuable for me. There are some things that are just significantly better on visionOS. There are tons of rough edges, limitations, and missing features still - it's getting better each release, but it's got a ways to go yet.
I recommend the Vision Pro only if you really know what you're getting into, or actually need it for a business purpose. If you're writing apps for visionOS, you need one. If you're an enthusiast and have the disposable income for it, go for it.
Bottom line: it's not going to replace any other single device for you at the moment. It's more of an "early access to the future" kind of thing than anything else - but it's a future I really do believe will come in a couple of years at most, and in five years I think we'll look back at this period the same way we look back at the original iPhone.
In other words, the criticisms we're seeing here are valid, but they're not the full story. You can't judge the success of a platform based on the first iteration. As visionOS and "spatial computing" mature, these comments will seem silly unless you can put yourself in the context they're being made today.
I was younger then, and wasn't as "tied in" to tech news. I misremembered that part it seems.
The first iPod I saw in the wild was in ~2003-2004. I remember thinking it was really expensive for what it was, but it seemed crazy that it could hold an entire library of music.
I'm overall bullish on AR/VR but the time horizon on it becoming mainstream has turned out a lot longer than I imagined when I first bought an HTC vive 8 or so years ago. :)
I'm older now, have more disposable income, and am much more immersed in tech in general.
> I know some people that have VR headsets but nobody, personally, that has the vision pro.
I have a Quest 3, a Pimax Crystal, and a Vision Pro. Of those, I no longer use the Quest 3 - my kids game on it quite a bit, or I'd sell it.
The Pimax Crystal is a great piece of hardware, and works very well for playing PCVR games. I use it for War Thunder (combat flight sim). The software is terrible, but I have it set up to work well with my single use case for it. I'm happy with it based on that.
The Vision Pro is more flexible, and has more utility than the Crystal. It's inferior for gaming to the Quest 3, but not as bad as people seem to be saying it is, and is improving rapidly.
I've gotten the Vision Pro working for PCVR (via ALVR). It's very rough and requires a lot of tinkering to get running, but it works. Honestly, it's about on par with the Crystal in that area, but the Crystal is superior in terms of FOV - and that's very important when you're using it to fly imaginary airplanes in imaginary combat.
> Vision pro is a new product in a market that has little adoption.
I agree. In fact, I think people are making a mistake comparing it directly to things like the Quest line. Yes, it supports many of the same things and has many of the same capabilities. It's targeting a completely different use case, though.
My iPad Pro is more capable hardware-wise than most people's laptops, but it can't do a lot of things a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop can do. That doesn't mean it's worse though, because it's not in competition with those laptops. I have laptops, and still carry my iPad with me and leave the laptops at home most of the time.
> Maybe it is more like the ipad? Or maybe it is just different than any previous apple release.
It's a mix. The produce category is very different, but Apple's approach is pretty consistent. They enter a new market at the very top, implement a few features, and refine them. They don't try to do everything all at once.
As a result, it's not right for everyone. It's only right for people whose use case coincides with the feature set that has been implemented to date. As that feature set expands, so will size of the market.
What are you talking about? When the first Zune launched, there were already 160 GB iPods, which was more storage then the Zune's 120 GB max (and more storage then you needed unless you watched a lot of videos on your iPod). I can't find MSRPs, but what I can find indicates that they were comparable on price as well.
> The iPhone was closer to the Vision Pro. It was obviously a revolutionary product, but it was extremely limited, and it took several OS versions before it got to the point where it was really ready for mass adoption. The iPhone 3G or 3GS was probably the first one that really got traction.
The iPhone 3G was the second generation iPhone, launched about a year after the first gen. The first gen also sold over 6 million units, while the Vision Pro has yet to crack a million.
I agree that the Apple Vision story isn't finished. But we shouldn't go re-writing history to defend it. Regardless of how much you like it, the Apple Vision Pro hasn't set the world on fire. And it's not clear what Apple can do to get the general public excited about it.
You aren't remembering the iPod years very well at all. The Zune came out 5 years after the iPod. The iPod was already dominant by the time it came out (had at least 70% market share and was selling millions of units). The early competitors were MP3 CD players and the Creative Nomad. The iPod outclassed every single one of them.
What was suppressing early sales of the iPod was the size, the lack of Windows compatibility, and the ability of common people to buy music for it.
It was quite chonky in Gens 1 and 2 and even Gen 3 was a bit too large for most people. So when the iPod mini came out sales absolutely took off. Second, was the lack of Windows syncing. That came in 2002 with Musicmatch, and then was made vastly better in 2003 with the release of iTunes for Windows. And with the release of iTunes for Windows people also had a way of buying songs for the device.
When iPad came out plenty of people had the notion that "no one really needs that, it's just a toy".
This is a pattern with apple products going back to the original Macintosh.
It is, in fact, pretty much still just a big iPhone.
It turns out that's enough for a lot of people.
I still chuckle at that one.
Remember the iPad Mini? People were calling full-size the "Maxi iPad".
That's the phase that we're in right now. The utility isn't quite there, but the promise is.
These days I use my iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard as my primary web interface. That wasn't possible at first, but if you looked at the product with the future in mind, it was forseeable.