Posted by mfiguiere 4 days ago
Vision Pro - solution looking for a problem, in development for ≈8 years.
It really makes you think how clueless Apple has become post-Jobs ...
*4 years if we acknowledge it was an existing category and Apple just improved on competition
[copy-pasted from my Mastodon]
And while Apple has millions to burn, they better find something else other than doing iPhones.
While I don't think the Vision Pro is a good fit for Apple (most of their products are portable, while the Vision Pro is unlikely to have much uptake outside of the home and office), it is hard to gauge whether it would be adopted without actually bringing it to the market.
I'm guessing Apple and Sony would have invested in improving the process if it had hit expectations.
Likely closer to half of that. Dont forget they're still launching it in other countries this year, so they've clearly got ample stock left over.
I've yet to find someone who thought a $3500 headset would be a smash hit.
It was constant and everywhere. Tens of posters who have apparently zero connection to the company Apple other than "They released the iPhone" as if they've never had a high profile flop, as if they've never had only okay sales of a product, as if they've never tried to change the world and failed miserably, as if Apple never misses.
Because of a single damn product release. One time. At the crux of a phase change in the personal digital device world.
Just, utterly divorced from reality. I feel like these posters are half of my company's management team.
Almost everyone I know (and people here on HN) thought this would be niche at $3500. But that doesn't mean people don't want to be plugged into screens. They totally are plugged into screens - just not Vision Pro.
I've seen a backlash in recent years. Most notably amongst techies, ironically, but more recently in the general public. People are waking up.
It's getting closer to that, but not quite there yet. There's Bigscreen Beyond out already, and the Immersed Visor is coming up, and they're a lot closer to that than Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro to glasses (but also either less powerful and/or more expensive).
https://mixed-news.com/en/immersed-visor-next-gen-xr-headset...
Early adopters didn't use iPhones, they used HP iPaqs and Dell Axim PDAs running Windows Mobile. iPhones obsoleted them by simplifying the UI so anybody aged 8-80 could use it.
If an Apple product seems like it's for 'early adopters', it's already failed.
Yes. I threw my phone away 2.5 years ago (after my 3yo daughter kept saying "no phone dadda") and it has made my life significantly better. Like living in the 1990's again.
In a land of the distracted, the phoneless man is king.
That being said, I think the AVP is very cool technology, and will have important applications in the years ahead. (Just not mass market for a long time, if ever)
What I really mean by that though, is that I want to make my screen time more meaningful. I don’t want to mindlessly scroll, like I often find myself doing, or like I see others doing in places like grocery store lines or on the subway.
The Apple Vision Pro is a very expensive, specialized device. When I use it, it's mostly to watch movies, TV shows, or other immersive content, but it’s still mainly just for entertainment. But I can't just sit in it and disassociate the same way I might my phone--I don't feel that it's built that way.
As for getting no traction, yeah that's correct. It's too expensive. I still love mine.
Next iphone are going to cost more and more, such a failure must have cost them a lot of money.
well i can't think of a single killer app for this or any VR headset for me.
at $3.5k there is pressure to position this as a leap forward in solutions to non existent problems.
watching films on a flight or using a virtual desktop don't excite most people.
For a headset the size of a pair of glasses?
* A well-designed HUD that can seamlessly integrate 95%+ of the "utility functions" (as opposed to entertainment functions) from my phone into my field of vision. Calls, messages, navigation, calendar, notes. I never want to look at my phone unless I'm bored.
* One of those "speed reader" [0] apps that will flicker a message at 600WPM at me. This should probably interface with all long-form text.
* Subtitles/translations for the people I talk to.
* An "offline dating" app that only allows you to swipe people you see
I firmly belive AR is the future of personal computing, but the hardware needs to gain an order of magnitude in capabilities.
[0] https://www.spreeder.com/app.php, but smarter (word groups, adjust displaytime for word complexity)
Apple and Facebook are the polar opposite of that. They look at a product segment and think "How we do sell this to X million people?" Turns out that regular people that buy iPhones and Macbooks, might not be as interested in VR.
i believe apple can make a compelling mixed reality headset but they need compelling apps and very few are going to develop if the platform is over $2000 in my opinion