Apple Vision Pro U.S. Sales Are All but Dead, Market Analysts Say
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Or, maybe it isn't Apple-specific; maybe there simply isn't enough users, or VR/AR as a software paradigm is currently too far removed from how companies design their applications, and it is just a matter of time until they adapt. Like I said, I am not a developer, so maybe I'm missing something obvious here.
It's an expensive gadget for a niche [0] market. $3500 is an incredibly high price for what it is.
0, https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ 1.75% of Steam users have a VR headset as of June this year which is lower than the people who are using Linux for gaming (2.08%). So you can see how small the VR market is. And the top alternatives are $500 (Quest 3) and $1000 (Valve Index) which are expensive on their own but $3500 (that you can't even use on Steam gaming lol) is just an astronomical difference
This product is going to take a while to a) get good and b) go mainstream
I have no visibility inside Apple so I don't know if they drank their own kool-aid on this one or if this is just Ye Olde Yellow Journalism, but it's a strange amount of drama over something that in any other industry would be a complete non-story, even at ten times the dollar amount. Probably more than that, depending on the industry!
The other thing that doesn't line up with this take is how Apple announcing they've cancelled the next Vision Pro to work on a lower cost version is squared up. Even if you still take the Vision Pro as having always been intended a dev kit for early access, needing to cancel the follow on model development to rescope to a lower end product for the market is no less a miss than the initial launch in that the entire program was completely misaligned with the market until well after launch.
I think half of the news stories are a result of Apple pushing this to release to market instead of just shuttering the version internally and the other half are a result of a launch problem like this being relatively rare for the most valuable company in the world and not necessarily about viewing the product itself with blinders.
Apple's made no such announcement, and the presence of the "Pro" moniker implies that a non-Pro version has always been planned.
I think zamadatix convinced me that Apple drank their own kool-aid on VR though. That's too bad. I'm sure someone had a bonus large enough to prevent them from seeing straight. Hopefully it doesn't turn into another Scott Forstall situation, where Apple fires them and then it turns out that sins notwithstanding they were the voice of reason when it came to something else. Dammit, it's been a decade and Apple still hasn't given up on the Fisher Price widgets. Ah well. The world spins on.
They're plenty of reports they announced that change to hardware partners. I wouldn't hold my breath for a press release if that's what you're referring to though.
> and the presence of the "Pro" moniker implies that a non-Pro version has always been planned.
What's this to do with the price of tea in China? Apple halted work on the next Pro version to work on the lower cost version. This doesn't say Apple just now invented the idea of releasing a non-pro version. It does say Apple has realized the initial market tier they were developing for was the wrong one to start with and they need to stop any more work on that tier for now to instead work on getting said lower tier model to market next.
Who knows if they'll succeed in the end, but this is just the beginning of a long term project.
They were presumably following Apple’s lead. Apple predicted far higher sales than we’ve seen and have had to cut those predictions down to size.
After all, why would they release a v2 next year? What significant improvements could they make in that time that would entice new customers - or entice existing customers to upgrade?
The MacBook is a work device used by many professionals and can easily be justified as a recurring business expense. The iPhone is a relatively cheap device whose sales are bolstered by affordable payment plans offered by US carriers. These devices sell in huge volumes and it makes sense for people upgrade them often, so there's a lot of money to be had in frequent iterative releases. That's just not the case with the Vision Pro.
If Apple releases a new Vision Pro, it will need to be a big upgrade - or a cost-down model with a more accessible price point.
I personally think it’ll be a big success but have no idea how long it might take.
Apple Vision Pro was never touted as a gaming device, so I get that. I still hope Facebook/Meta keeps up with the Quest.
I think “$3500 is an incredibly high price for what it does for me” is true for most consumers, but if that were incredibly high for what it is, we’d see other companies sell comparable hardware at half the price.
I also think that means they have a bigger problem than just bringing the price down. What it is is incredible, but what it does for me? Mwah.
I don’t think it would fly off the shelves (for a company of Apple’s size) for half the price.
OTOH they wouldn’t sell any at all to consumers if they announced there was a sensibly priced one planned for the future.
Like I'd buy iPad instantly if it could run a real OS (like a surface pro) - but Apple loves the app store margins soo much they will fight tooth and nail too keep you locked in, at heavy expense of capability.
Likewise for Apple vision pro :
- productivity - only if it fits the store model
- entertainmen - only if daddy Apple approves
- hackability - no way
But VR and iPad are things where I want fully capable/hackable environments - that's not going to happen with Apple App Store business model.
hopefully once the display tech becomes cheaper, the overall price will come down quite a bit. But $500? unrealistic expectations IMO. Maybe in 10 years.
This looks like one of the primary targets to start cutting.
No, it doesn't. The Quest series has done well for itself with boosted smartphone chips.
Surely, that means simpler graphics, but the graphics aren't really the thing holding VR back right now. Ease of use, comfort, weight, eye strain, motion sickness, physical feedback, these are all bigger issues imo. (Though I'll admit that larger FoV would help, and that's tied to graphical power)
I think it's unrealistic of Apple to expect sales for more than $500, and the market has proven that to be correct.
If you check the GPU stats it's the "AMD Custom GPU 0405" which stands at 0.62% accross all GPUs
But I completely agree, the high price for a VR set without good support is absurd.
With an interesting chicken and egg problem. There aren't enough users to justify making content for it and nobody wants to buy it because there isn't enough content.
Pretty much all of the VR headsets have this problem. So did the Amazon Echo devices.
There are also effectively 0 well qualified developers for VisionOS — it’s so new that no one outside Apple has a significant amount of experience. So even beyond pure build hours alone, getting an application launched on the platform is a non-trivial amount of developer training.
There's no users, no plan to scale to lots of users, and therefore no developers.
It might be partially because of the size of the VR/AR market, but Apple's approach with Vision Pro was never to try to capture all of it. It seemed mostly to gain experience in manufacturing and start to see if anything actually materialized.
In many ways it's a very anti-Apple product launch in that it didn't have a very clear use for the common person from day 1, which has been the mantra for everything from the iPhone to AirPods.
Did they say this, because otherwise I'm calling ... you know what.
This is a failed product by Apple.
I do agree that it's a failed product, but I also don't think they had any plan for "success" with it.
So far the only market for VR is niche entertainment. VRC is fun, but VR games have been arounds for decades and never gotten past novelty.
AR has value as an accessibility tool because it can get around the high cost of some infrastructure changes. But like all accessibility tools, profit-focused eyeballs see it as a small, low-margin market. Enabling human rights is not considered profit.
That's not true. VR also thrives in corporate. Niches, yes. But it does do well there. Training and simulation scenarios in particular. There's some tools like uptale and arthur that capitalise on this.
And VR games are really really good and add a lot of immersion. I don't like to game without it anymore.
I don't think VR is for everything and everyone but there certainly are usecases for it.
Haptic feedback in the newest iphone? You need to support it in order to be featured.
You can play games on apple watch? If you support it, a guaranteed feature.
New localisation guidelines? Featured only if you support all of them.
So back then (not sure how it is right now) you needed to implement useless or at the very least something unnecessary in order to be featured on iPhone and make a buck. Otherwise apple wasn't able to sell their new technologies.
If nothing has changed, people will try to port their games to apple vr so they are more likely to be featured on iPhone.
All our games (6, iirc), were featured.
Apple really shot themselves in the foot here with the headstrap design and by weighing it down with the metal and glass housing. Even the "good" strap is unbalanced and uncomfortable and so practical for very little but consuming content in a reclined position.
By contrast, the Quest 3 is noticeably lighter and has an entire ecosystem of head straps that allow for extended wear without discomfort, to the point that the limiting factor is the battery. Between that and the much lower price, the market of people willing to actually buy apps and services (mostly games, but also stuff like Bigscreen or workout apps) is orders of magnitude larger.
You can create content in a recline position too. It's utterly fantastic, actually, if you just have a little tray in your lap for a wireless keyboard, and a mouse on a table on your armrest.
I really think the future of VR is mostly in a reclined position, actually -- headset weight becomes a non-issue, and it just avoids developing postural problems. It's infinitely better for your back and neck and shoulders than sitting in a chair at a desk all day long.
The Meta Quest finally recently gained the ability to shift your environment to a vertical angle, for reclining or lying down in bed.
I don't really see VR's killer app being immersive games while standing up or sitting down, because of motion sickness. I think it's going to be reclining, doing work on big screens as well as watching content on big screens and immersively. I think we're just waiting for the displays to increase their resolution a bit more, and for prices for those displays to come down.
Reclining...why would you want to do that? It sounds like a huge step back, just give me a Switch at that point.
When you're "in the zone" programming on a screen or writing a book or editing a movie, it's not like you're particularly aware of your environment anyways. And like I said -- not building up the lower back problems that will haunt you later in life.
And like I said, isolation while working is actually kind of a feature, when you're deep in productive work. Just think of all the people who wear noise-cancelling headphones in offices to tune out the distracting environment.
I don't want to use it for video calls or while multitasking, but for serious work I want to be isolated -- that's a feature not a bug. And passthru is a kind of nice in-between mode.
[1] https://www.madebygabor.com/product/16666/Gabor-DM_552-Levit...
I could see what you say being true if I was young, single, and lived alone. I have a wife and kids though and explicitly don't want to be isolated from that.
Sure you don't want to be isolated from your family while you're checking e-mails or watching a movie together. That goes without saying.
But most people I know with a partner and kids lock themselves in an office anyways while they're doing serious work in order not to be constantly distracted. If they are lucky enough to have a dedicated office at home. And there's nothing dystopian about doing your work reclining with a VR headset, any more than it's dystopian for video editors work in a darkened room with no windows, or software engineers to work in open-plan offices with two or four monitors and noise-cancelling headphones.
In fact the only reason I still come there is because sometimes I have to. Not because I want to or because it adds any kind of value.
Long term, here's what I suspect may happen. Robotics+AI is going to eat the lunch of VR. VR is only used when it's not economical to have the actual stuff, but the realm of nifty real world stuff is going to expand tremendously.
This may well result in a societal bifurcation, where the rich have a bunch of robots, and the poor have to settle for VR.
Pretty much this. People, generally, just are NOT going to wear this on their face for very long, if at all. This product solved zero problems that most people have. It's literally an iPad you wear on your face and most people would much rather spend $500 on an iPad.
Apple has a hard core base market. That said, the Vision Pro/headset market is small and Apple is only really going to get the Apple fanboy portion of that.
There's the root of the problem right there. Apple's best successes had a very clear purpose in mind from the beginning:
- iPod: 1,000 songs in your pocket
- iPhone: A phone, an internet communicator, an iPod
- iPad: Media consumption
AVP didn't have a clear purpose right out the door, and it's very un-Apple to launch a new product category without figuring that out first.
They need to focus on weight, them making it have the glass front+screen and being made of metal was a terrible idea.
The front facing display also seems absolutely needless.
neither here nor there, and I know you didn't ask, but from one tech worker to another, this isn't normal and unless you had some condition before you should be addressing this with exercise.
You’re right that you address it with exercise though.
Oh 100%, not afraid to admit that! And it probably wasn't wise to just dive right into it without building up to all day use.
A few versions in, they settled on "watches are for health and fitness"
Ben Thompson discusses the AVP as an immersive iPad, and that's kind of the problem. It's too locked down to be my productivity device (something that could justifiably command a premium price), and my entertainment budget isn't that high for one person (I already have a tv in that price range - cheaper tbh - that's really really good)
Even watching the VR sports that they are trying to make happen, you'll be doing that alone. For a lot of people watching sports is a communal experience and you'll never get that with the Vision Pro.
The health and fitness stuff is nice, but more so for productivity it's nice. I never need to take my phone out of my pocket most days purely because notifications and phonecalls pop up in my watch.
More on the health and fitness front is that I can leave home with airpods and my watch and not be cut off from the world when I go out for a jog, previously I would need to deal with a holster for my phone.
The thing I generally miss the most when I don't have my Apple watch on, I can't lift my arm to look at the time or get today's date. And that leads me to want to go back to my old analogue watch.
Yes, I think it has some good uses for health/fitness. I can't bring myself to think it is the driver for people buying it.
I think you're just mistaken, then. Health and fitness absolutely is the driver.
They tried to market it as a fashion purchase in v1, and then gave up on that. It can still be fun with different straps, but I don't know of anyone who considers it a fashion purchase.
Happy to see data proving otherwise. I'm also more than willing to believe a lot of people will use some of the asserted benefits as a reason to justify getting the fashion item. But even the enthusiasts I know that get some of the health tracking rings and such drop off after a hilariously short honeymoon with the devices.
The only exception I have seen to this, so far, are active users that are more likely to have a garmin.
That is to say: while they converted some existing watch wearers, they greatly expanded the market.
What I'm not certain of is "why". Fitness is an easy answer (that's something an apple watch does and my Seiko doesn't), but fashion is also a reasonable answer (apple is a premium brand)
I think the true answer might be "defaults are powerful"
Airpods are generally not the best sound quality you can buy, but they're well-integrated with the apple ecosystem. You can assume they'll just work. I would be surprised if they are a fashion piece, but I suspect their dominance looks similar to apple watch dominance
Do I think this is the only reason at all? Probably not. I will agree that there are certainly many people that do get it for the utility alone. Happy to see numbers going over any of this, of course. Mostly all I have to go on are anecdotes regarding Apple watches.
And yeah, if you do care that much (amateur or pro athlete training) there's no way the A-watch is the primary device for you. Garmin is the king of the hill in that market.
That's the product and its inevitable in some form or another. Its just too early
If there's one thing we were able to learn with 100% certainty over the last couple years, it is this. I still think it'll have to be transparent, or at least Google Glass like, to achieve mass adoption.
"I need a SinoLogic 16, Sogo-7 data gloves, a GPL stealth module, one Burdine intelligent translator, and Thomson eyephones."
It's just not that useful, or alternatively way too expensive. But I think they communicated their theory pretty well.
It was extremely pricey and saturated the market, and from what I read most of the market was underwhelmed by its capabilities. I'm still waiting on my virtual workstation where I can have infinite virtual monitor space, instead we keep getting various whiz-bang gimmicks that are good for a demo but have no real use.
This is it. Right now my work has to shrink down to fit on four monitors. Virtual desktops can help, but only so much. When I'm trying to puzzle something out over 20 windows--source code files, git history, documentation for two or three libraries, Wikipedia, Slack, StackOverflow, I spend a non-trivial amount of time just keeping all that organized and switching between things.
What I want is a room where I can spread out. And I need it for $1500 or less.
I'm in the same camp as you – my main objective for a headset would be infinite portable monitor space. I really hope we get there in the next few years.
Misinformation. The good EVs are selling quite well. It's just that their price has effectively dropped quite a lot. My wife's Model Y which cost us nearly $80k (we bought at peak price: the prior Corolla got totalled) now has the equivalent 2024 model selling for $42k!
The crappy EVs (ie most everyone else's) aren't selling, because they are inferior in efficiency and software implementation. Rivian and Lucid vehicles are pretty good, but those companies are still at risk of never showing a profit. I've been in a Hyundai Ionic 5, and that seemed decent too.
Proof that Tesla demand is up in July 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHiAIZsXT1Q
They’ve really backed themselves in to a corner with the pricing of their headset far exceeding what all but the most enamored enthusiasts are willing to stomach. On top of that, the sales are so bad that it is not worth companies of nearly any size to dedicate time to creating apps or content for the platform.
Apple is probably going to have to light a gigantic stack of cash on fire to try to course correct this. Or they’ll cut their losses and write it off entirely
Much cheaper: ship a bug that allows OS jailbreak to run VMs. See what unshackled creators develop. Add official interfaces to support those use cases. Rinse & repeat.
There is also TrollStore -- two days ago, https://x.com/fce365/status/1810761291306323997
iOS 17.0 TrollStore INSTALL METHOD Finally Achieved!It's the current iOS major version and apps will support this version for years to come.
Those who saved blobs with https://github.com/airsquared/blobsaver can freely switch between new and old iOS versions, e.g. if they have a use case which needs https://trollstore.org/:
TrollStore is a tool that allows non-jailbroken iOS users to install and run IPA files without App Store verification. It works on iOS 15.5-16.6.1 and iOS 17.0, and supports automatic app refreshing and resigning.Seems legit, https://appdb.to/info/empire-strikes-back
Apple lacks that courage
They don't even allow emulators in iOS.
It took EU a decade to make Apple allow third party stores and even then Apple hasn't really complied still.
Same for browser engines.
With AVF virtual machines become a core construct of the Android operating system, similar to the way Android utilizes Linux processes. Developers have the flexibility to choose the level of isolation for a virtual machine:
One-way isolation: Android (the host) can control and inspect the contents of the VM. These are most commonly used for sandboxing and separation..
Two-way isolation (Isolated VM): Android (the host) and the virtual machine (the guest) are completely isolated from each other.. This has 2 main properties:
1. The workload and data inside the VM is inaccessible (confidential) from the host (Android).
2. Even if Android is compromised all the way up to (and including) the host kernel, the isolated VM remains uncompromised.That's why I am always surprised when somebody calls it a devkit. It is just a coping mechanism for a failed product.
Furthermore if Apple wants to turn it into such devkits, why do such weird and unnecessary mating rituals? Just let anyone who has active developer license on Apple ID to modify Vision OS and see what they are going to come up with. Apple will then add it into Vision OS and ban people who come up with the solution at a first place. As it is done in AppStore today.
The device is simply far too expensive. No software is going to meaningfully change the value proposition relative to its competitors.
It would certainly cost an absolute fortune to acquire the streamung rights, but live sports is an area where fans have demonstrated that they are willing to spend a fortune on AV equipment and subscription fees.
https://www.theverge.com/24085629/apple-car-dead-project-tit...
While Apple’s R&D budget can rival some small nations’ GDP, I think it will be exceedingly difficult for Apple to continue to pour resources into these project amid the apparent flop of AVP
Apple needs to accept that even a “pro” product needs be usable for non “pro” tasks, and needs to support them. If their Vision line is going to be successful they’re going to need to have more first party support of things like gaming. Partner with Steam, and/or Sony, to get more titles on it. Or pay developers to port games to it and ensure the experience is stellar. It won’t be a short term strategy, but I think a lack of good and unique applications will create a chicken and egg problem. No one wants one, because there are no killer apps, and no one is making those killer apps, because there isn’t a large enough audience.
I personally like Sony’s PSVR2, a dumb headset, but has good fidelity. I hope Apples next cheaper VR headset has the same visual quality but less of an OS.
I said it on the day they first announced it, as soon as the media hype was over, no one would ever mention it again.
Other than price, not sure what else they could do to make it appealing.
To me the problem with the Vision line is it doesn't give any compelling reason to want it now or in the imminent future, even if it were priced similarly to lower end headsets, to really drive large numbers of sales on yet another VR walled garden. There is no killer app you'll spend hundreds of hours in, it's not going to actually replace/upgrade using your traditional apps, VR gaming is already relatively niche in established and open marketplaces but this has a brand new walled garden marketplace, and it offers nothing particularly "revolutionary" people haven't been promised 100 times about VR/AR to be disappointed with already. If it offered something meaningful against all of these points then it'd still sell decent numbers even at $3,500 but the problem is it's just lame despite being so high end.
In 2022 the US median personal income was $47,000. That's pre tax. Consider approximations with averages and marginal tax rates and take out 12% for tax, and you have $3445 per month median personal income.
The apple headset is $3500.
Take out average rent of $1350. Average credit card debt per consumer is just over $6300 in 2024, which seems high, but is also nearly twice monthly post tax income (holy crap). Average car payment for used vehicles is just over $500. I've not discussed food or utilities.
Given the above are for the average consumer, I'm not at all surprised a luxury and discretionary niche item such as the AVP has had next to no sales.
The problem isn't that the price of this particular VR headset was too high for average people to hope to afford it's that there is no compelling reasons for average people to buy VR headsets like this in the first place. Particularly when that company is just entering the market. Put another way: Even if a person were given a Vision Pro for free at launch I doubt they would have spent 100 hours in it by now. Is that not at least worth mentioning instead of just deferring to price when talking about why nobody wants it?
And, again, if the headset were targeted towards the budget market there is still no reason to expect it would have sold particularly well. E.g. there is a cheaper (~$550) but similar headset from an already established VR company with a lot more compelling a marketplace/ecosystem for an already existing line of products. They're (Meta, Quest 3) in the same ballpark with total revenue and less than a million units on their latest headset in a similar time period despite all these advantages and having the "right" price.
Your statement that 8m units were sold followed later by a statement that it would have not sold well in the budget market is also contradictory.
I stand by my claim that the cost is the main issue, because when you're playing a volume sales game in a small market and you're significantly more expensive than the competition, and your product is a purely luxury / discretionary purpose, you're probably screwed up your market segmentation and product placement.
I have the Xreal Airs. They run $300 for a 1080p screen. Apples screen is much better, but not 10x better.
Apple really needed to come in the $1k price range for this to be viable.
Again I'm not saying the high price was the optimal value, I'm saying the high price is far from the whole story on why the device didn't sell well and that a downmarket version still would not have sold well, even compared to existing peers in the lower cost space.
In order to make a compelling experience the tech is Very Expensive...and what it really is is a funky monitor and funky mouse.
Well monitors are a couple hundred bucks and a mouse is $50.
And even when it _is_ affordable, it's just not 'sticky' (yes, I know, poor choice of words)
I've used 'em since the Vive and some of the experiences are outstanding....and yet they end up collecting dust for weeks at a time. I use it, it's great, I enjoy it...and then it goes back to collecting dust.
And I'm pretty sure the cheap, sunglasses, 4x better display of the future would be the same.
I suspect AR will be similar for your average consumer. Info overload is also real. If it's built into a car, or something else it then has a function and is good.
Google glass may have been on the right course all along
Every time they restart the effort, they eventuslly come to the conclusion that the tech just isn't there yet.
Currently, the short term plan (now that developers have something they can work with) is to produce a lighter/cheaper version of the shipping headset, while they continue long term work on an eyeglasses form factor for the consumer market.
What VR experiences have you had?
I was not impressed at all. Have had a Rift since they launched. Rift-S, Quest 2, Quest 3, PSVR, PSVR2. Nothing about the Vision Pro did anything for me. The "try to hold your eyes still to point" is the worst possible UX interaction I've ever used. Super un-natural and un-intuitive. That's not how my eyes work. I knew that the first time I tried "stare to point" on PSVR2. It was awful there and it's awful on Vision Pro
It also felt horrible. I'm not saying any of the other HMD are great but Vision Pro's weight was awful. It's either too tight to stay on or resting on my nose. Someday that will be fixed (glasses?) but in the context of shipping devices, the devices that put the weight on the forehead are way more comfortable. I think PSVR(1) was the first to do that. Rift-S copied. Quest is a step back unless you get a 3rd party accessory
The "you get one screen from your mac" was also disappointing. I've had 6 screens in VR from my PC since Rift shipped. It's built into the Rift/Link OS. Yes, it's got issues but 1 screen is still a step back of many years, not forward.
Though even then, while visually the Vision Pro does better then the Quest 3 at AR, the interactions leave a lot to be desired. AR (and VR) make me want to reach out and touch things. But when I tried, instead of letting me interact by touching it required me to "stare and hold eyes perfectly still and then tap fingers somewhere not on the thing I actually wanted to interact with"
Like if an app window is close enough to touch then I just want to touch it like a giant floating touch screen. Not "stare and tap pants".
I also wonder if Apple's decision to eschew any special pointing or peripheral device in favor of hand tracking was the best idea. If I owned one of these things and used it for casual internet browsing, I would much prefer some little handheld accessory so I could press buttons without having to gesticulate and make sure my posture was correct so that the cameras could pick up my hand movements.
That's okay, I'm sure Apple will try a flat keyboard with no tactile feedback soon :)
They're making noise they're aiming for thinness again.
Trick my brain into believing it is in another world. That is what is exciting. This is what your consumers want. An escape from this world into another. Sometimes it’s there, most of the time it’s not.
And inside the company, everyone can see that it's an embarrassing loss of interest from MZ after 2 years of urgent enthusiasm that didn't pan out. On to LLMs now!
Meta's entire business doesn't exist without it's user's giving them content. They are so far away from a creative company.
Then somebody proposes that you sell 100,000 of what you have right now for $3500. This provides $100 million dollars of profit to offset your research costs. In the end, you manufacture 80,000 and sell 60,000 of them. So you net $10 million plus 60,000 free testers (well, 1000 after everyone stops using them at all) plus 20,000 surplus units to use in various research.
Gizmodo can paint this as a commercial failure. Apple could sell the 20,000 unsold units for $100 each. That would generate another $2 million of profit even at a $2400 marginal loss per unit. They would fly off the shelves and Gizmodo would paint this as a huge commercial success. Even though Apple still wouldn't hit their 100,000 unit target. It would create panic in Apple's competitors even though they actually make a profit on $500 headsets.
So read this however you want. It's a commercial failure because it only netted $10 million dollars and might only net $1 million/year going forward. Or it's a successful funding round on the road to cheaper and more capable future products.
I'm not particularly an Apple fan, but I think it's silly to portray this in such a bad light. Would somebody like SimulaVR love to experience such a "failure"?
(All numbers above except the 100,000 target units and the $3500 price are hypothetical.)
To take that further, one dream of AR (and maybe VR too) is it's supposed to make you more productive. Maybe it's having 2, 3, 6 screens instead of one. Maybe it's 3d manipulation instead of mouse, touch. Maybe it's 2 hands instead of a finger. Maybe it's no computer needed because virtual displays.
If a device actually made you more productive then Apple would buy every employee that device. It would be stupid not too. Clearly the Vision Pro is not that device.
I'm pretty confident Meta has the same issue. They pushed using Quest for meetings, for productivity, and now their new commercials are pushing it for better instruction. But, I'm pretty confident, none of their employees use it for those purposes and if they don't, why would anyone else?
The Quest at least as a bunch of games, some of which are worth the experience I know several of their employees that play those games so that's the one thing they are actually using the device for themselves.
How come does Apple come to a market that was already going down, pretending that Quest and HoloLens never did developer sessions showing exactly the same kind of content, a decade ago?
To make matters worse, their current attitude that developers should feel grateful and blessed to even be able to touch their SDKs, means that very few feel like targeting a device that costs as much as it does.
1) For VR productivity, I need my desktop application windows to run native in a VR 3d window manager. So far, all I've found are variations on the following: you get to remote into your existing desktop window manager which is projected as a 2d plane into your 3d space. This is practically useless. To actually use VR for productivity... I need to have my task windows not be co-planer.
2) Last time I checked up on this, practically no one [2] is working on this, I have stopped even watching the VR space. The hardware is here, but no one is making the software I want.
3) Vision Pro (as I understand it) is not a productivity VR headset. It's an ipad on your face that can remote into your desktop - but not in a way that integrates into the 3d window manager.
[1]: https://varjo.com/products/aero/
[2]: Okay, techincally SimulaVR is working on a native 3d window manager, but they opened preorders years ago and still don't have a ship date.
Well, I think they confused Apple with Steve Jobs, yes Jobs had almost a Midas touch regarding product design, especially when given the time to reflect on competition mistakes, and people forget that he also "missed the mark" a few times.
Tim Cook is a different character, his special ability is his uncanny focus on squeezing the supply chain and keeping the money printer churning.
This is not the Jesus goggle the fanboys were looking for, even if the tech seems impressive, I think they should not have launched it.
Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Silicon… plenty of great products and services have come out under Cook’s time as CEO.
In my lifetime it has been exceedingly rare for Apple to launch a failing product. The company tends to be pretty conservative in what new features and products it launches to protect the brand equity. It’s not impossible, but I would be hesitant to consider Apple Vision Pro and their AR/VR efforts to be a failure unless you are negative on the entire AR/VR industry and future applications.
I’d also challenge you in your comparison about the Apple Car and Apple Vision Pro, because one of those were actual products that shipped to market, and even so the Apple Vision Pro hasn’t been out very long so it’s not really fair to say it has failed or that it was a dud. It could be, but I think if so it’s less so to do with the price and more so to do with the AR/VR industry itself being a dud.
This last application amused me because nobody does washing up, they just use dishwashing machines or eat disposable junk food, plus the family unit has been atomised.
I spoke enthusiastically about these headsets to a friend and his conclusion was that people just would not want these things on their faces. People go out to be seen as well as to see.
In recent years we have had people scorn the failed IO Goggles for the latency, low resolution and price, to claim that Meta and others have fixed these problems. They might have done, but they haven't conquered games or transport. You would think kids would be wearing these things on long car journeys and grown ups using them on plane flights.
Nothing has changed significantly for the mass market and these Apple VR headsets are clunkier than what we had 25 years ago, I am sorry to say. They are more expensive too.
If they were an open platform, a glorified monitor, they would have a niche with VR applications, such as when you want to present a 3D model to someone, for example, a building or a car, where the ability to have a proper walkaround has some advantage in impressing the client.
Civilians, whom this product is aimed at, do not and will never have the hard to learn 3D content creating skills. Nobody is going to remodel their kitchen with these gadgets.
Really it is for gaming where this product should win.
The elephant in the room is glasses, anyone with the money for this gadget wears glasses and they don't really mix.
I would have gotten one if the DPI for text was as good as a monitor and I didn't need to depend on a MacBook. (I don't watch videos, but I'd love a monitor-less solution for coding on the plane.)
The bigger problem is that I just see absolutely no reason to buy it.
If I’m spending “pro computer” money, I want the pro computer. Having no way to access the file system or run code is just crazy to me.
I'm amused that Apple fans are not willing to spend $3500 for a computer with a 3000+" display that you don't have to hold on your lap or desk.
What would they pay for a 15" Macbook Air with two fold-out screens?
I can't help but feel that somebody is going to get things just right and disrupt computing as we've known it. Even if it takes several "failed" experiments like Glass or AVP to find the sweet spot.
The report says they will sell under 500K units in the year, which matches that.
It also says they’ve sold around 100K units within this most recent quarter . Which if you divide by the number of months since its launch, is also completely inline with the linear projection of the number of units that could have been manufactured for that period.
That said I still use my AVP regularly, it's a great home theater system for 4k HDR content that's portable for travel. I've owned other headsets like the valve index but the novelty of 3d gaming wore off pretty quickly.
For an example of what I mean, compare a game that actually embraces the medium like Gorilla Tag to the endless numbers of "PC FPS, but in VR with nausea-inducing stick movement" shooter games that don't.
It is as simple as that. When the capabilities of a Vision Pro will be available directly from an invisible chip implanted in your head, yes it will be a success. Not as long as you'll have to wear goofy headsets.
Things like reading QR codes or accessing the camera feed are "enterprise" features that require Apple's permission to even access.
The docs also suck and too much information is only available in WWDC videos
They're gonna have to do a lot better than "slightly" there. At least to make it a success in more than just the US.
PSVR 2 is suffering from lack of original content on the PS5 and not making PSVR 1 content automatically backwards compatible - that would make the PSVR 2 a no brainer winner for gaming. Also the fresnel lenses on the PSVR 2 are distracting after you've used pancake lenses.
Quest 3 is suffering from image compression for video streaming and poor battery life. The game catalog / app catalog is large, but has the typical android feel for the apps - never smooth, unified, or polished. But I feel in that the Quest 3 is probably the best positioned right now for the average user d/t most content, no wires, and cost.
AVP is just too expensive for anyone atm, plus they don't have a catalog of VR games, so they are falling behind. If they had maybe 2-3 AAA games at launch, there would be a different sales arc. Not enough apps or content is available.
Also, based on my own user feedback, we've started to get requests across different apps with different user slices, all asking us for what amounts to replacing or adding AI chatbots on top of search (presumably withb some type of RAG implementation). The demand is definitely there.
It's too expensive for the every-person to buy, too early for even most early adopters, has very little practical uses so far. And those who know, know this device is effectively a devkit in retail clothing.
The first iPhone sucked. The first Apple watch wasn't great (and quickly lost support). The first iPod was probably one of the better "firsts" because it was better than what was out there, same with the iPad. But it generally takes even Apple a couple generations before their products really get going. Just wait till the AVP2 or 3.
OS 1 had disappointing mac mirroring, only slightly bigger resolution than my laptop.
But later OS versions talking about large-resolution or panoramic mac mirroring... that's super compelling for my use case. The productivity benefits of larger or multiple monitors, without having to sit at a desk.
Maybe there are other reasons that factor into why you think Tim should go as well but that's not really "for this" then (and probably still not a generally popular conclusion but at least more reasonably based).
... and it's not like the oculus thingies have sold in the billions. VR still has no killer app.