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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

>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

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Exactly. Revisit this stat in a couple of years once we are all talking about Vision Pro v3?

This product is going to take a while to a) get good and b) go mainstream

"It's a dev kit for those willing to spend on early access to Apple's AR/VR ecosystem" was always the sane take, it was really weird watching so many people convince themselves that it was a mass-market product and then convince themselves that the failure of a mass-market audience to materialize was some kind of a disaster.

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!

> it was really weird watching so many people convince themselves that it was a mass-market product and then convince themselves that the failure of a mass-market audience to materialize was some kind of a disaster.

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.

Right, $3500 is a really clear signal that Apple knows what it's doing, that this is not even an attempt to be a mainstream product yet.

Who knows if they'll succeed in the end, but this is just the beginning of a long term project.

I mean, when it's early in the failure, you can say this about any company's failed product: Oh, well [COMPANY] is really just thinking ahead, and might actually be playing 5D Chess... Think of what the long term might bring!

Apple has no problems clearly announcing dev kits as dev kits, just look at the Developer Transition Kit hardware they released for the PowerPC->Intel and Intel->Apple Silicon transitions. These kinds of things are not only clearly labeled as dev kits they have required paying to join dedicated dev kit programs which expressly forbid getting the (loaned, not bought) device for non-porting or non-development related work. Apple Vision Pro was nothing like that, it had consumer focused announcements at consumer focused events, had consumer ads, sold through the normal consumer channels, and used standard consumer accounts.

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.

> how Apple announcing they've cancelled the next Vision Pro to work on a lower cost version is squared up

Apple's made no such announcement, and the presence of the "Pro" moniker implies that a non-Pro version has always been planned.

If that is so, then they will probably release it at the same time as Final Cut. :)

iMovie exists. Technically speaking. Ever since they lobotomized it I too have tried hard to forget, but it has an icon and presumably someone finds it useful or at least clicks on it by accident every now and again.

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.

> Apple's made no such announcement

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.

I think it's pretty optimistic to expect either of those will be realized in a couple of years. If Apple does release a v3 in that time (big if), I'm doubtful it will amount to more than a minor iteration on the first gen model. I think Apple is probably happy to let this stay a niche product with a very slow release cadence.

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.

Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so specific. I meant come back in a few years and see where the product is once it’s had a few revisions.

I personally think it’ll be a big success but have no idea how long it might take.

> 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

Apple Vision Pro was never touted as a gaming device, so I get that. I still hope Facebook/Meta keeps up with the Quest.

> $3500 is an incredibly high price for what it is.

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.

"Mwah" is an onomatopoeia for air-kiss, I guess you mean "Meh"

It could have worked for a more physical experience, but the Vision Pro does less for me than even an Oculus Quest 2. No controllers, no haptics, I just get that it wasn't aimed at me but I'm scratching my head about what they were going for. Even Meta isn't to keen on the experiences I value in VR (basically fitness), and even though they support it, I get the feeling that they would much rather be doing social experiences...I hope someone enters the VR space in the fitness area with more enthusiasm.

I'd happily buy one for $500, but $3500 is way too much

It seems like a developer tool for building VR apps, which could make sense if they were planning on making a $500 device later. But, absent clear plans there, I can’t really see why anyone would buy it.

OTOH they wouldn’t sell any at all to consumers if they announced there was a sensibly priced one planned for the future.

Apple is the last company I want a VR headset from.

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

MacOS devices are a legacy from a different era in Apple business model - they would not build such devices today - and are not really expanding the range. iPhone I can live with the lockdown for the integration between MacOS, likewise for accessories (even here I might switch due to the taste their ecosystem business leaves in mouth).

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.

considering it has a CPU that is as powerful as the MacBook Pro, I find your target price extremely optimistic.

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.

Then it won’t be a success for another ten years. You can call them unrealistic expectations if you’d like but I’ll drop thousands on a laptop because I use it day in day out. There’s simply no chance I’ll be doing the same with a Vision so the price I’m willing to pay is adjusted accordingly.

i agree it won’t be successful for a very long time. I personally think fit and comfort are bigger challenges. The tech will certain get cheaper but how much lighter?

$500 is what a new gaming console costs. If Apple wants to compete for the attention of people with better gaming/entertainment experiences then their price needs to come down.

I think it's unrealistic of Apple to expect sales for more than $500, and the market has proven that to be correct.

Does it really need a CPU as powerful as a MacBook Pro though, I wonder. It certainly doesn't offer the same capabilities as one.

This looks like one of the primary targets to start cutting.

VR needs a more powerful CPU and GPU than a MacBook Pro needs if you're trying to break into the VR gaming market (not saying you need a faster CPU than an M3, but VR is extremely demanding and will use all the CPU and GPU you can throw at it to maintain 90+fps with multiview rendering), especially since Apple keeps pushing Metal and not supporting Vulkan. (Metal tends to have higher CPU overhead vs Vulkan, and means you have to add an additional rendering backend for existing VR games)

> VR needs a more powerful CPU and GPU than a MacBook Pro needs if you're trying to break into the VR gaming market

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)

If you really want powerful VR yes, but this is not what Apple is going for at all. They're only doing some very basic AR usecases with floating windows.

Linux for gaming presumably includes the Steam Deck, no?

Yes

If you check the GPU stats it's the "AMD Custom GPU 0405" which stands at 0.62% accross all GPUs

https://backlinko.com/steam-users 132 million active subscribers. So perhaps 2.3 million VR sets on steam. Any VR producer capturing 10% of the market has 230k VR sets sold. Doesn't seem like that small of a market.

But I completely agree, the high price for a VR set without good support is absurd.

> It's an expensive gadget for a niche [0] market

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.

> just an astronomical ~~difference~~ waste of money.

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