Apple could make it socially acceptable, but Apple needs to give people a reason to think they need this device before that can happen. I’m struggling to see what’s going to make people think they need a device 7 times the price of a typical competitor. Your argument is word processing and video editing?
AirPods are actually cheaper than a lot of competing headphones. And unlike you, I don’t imagine VR will be very popular outside of four walls. First, nobody wants to be robbed of their nearly $4k device while riding the bus/subway or walking around town. Second, a 2 hour battery life. You might see these get used on a plane, but that’s largely probably it. Coincidentally this is also the only place you see it being used outside of four walls in Apple’s own ad. If they’re wanting me to imagine using this outside of the home, then they didn’t do a very good job.
I bought my first iPad in 2012. I started to mirror it to an Apple TV shortly after, and god knows how much money I spent initially on pocket routers, 10-m long HDMI cables, workarounds, and busted data caps (yay to iCloud automatically syncing over wifi) making this work in my classroom before Apple would implement peer-to-peer airplay. Today, I am still using it, and that's what I love about my Apple products. It's all the little things, from the writing experience of the Apple Pencil, to the native apps optimised for touch and direct input, to the fluidity of iOS, to its integration with my other devices. It doesn't have to be this multi-orgasmic thrill ride every time I turn it on. It just needs to work, multiple hours a day, every day, without me having to micromanage the process.
As such, I feel that this obsession over that one killer app is way overblown. When the dust has settled, it's the little conveniences that have weaved itself into your life that will justify keeping the Vision Pro. Are those conveniences worth $4k? That's for the individual consumer to decide, and this is where Apple as a consumer-focused company shines, because the buyer is the end user (unlike in the corporate sector where the manager still has to justify the purchase) and the end user doesn't have to be rational (in that the reason only needs to make sense to him or her, not to anyone else).
With regards to use outside, maybe not on public transport at first, but what about Starbucks or a library? If it's okay for people to sit at a table for hours on end studying or working on their laptop, why would it not be acceptable for someone to do likewise with a vision pro? You can still charge it via the power outlet, you get free wifi, and the passthrough is good enough to let me keep track of my surroundings or reach for my coffee and drink it while still wearing the headset.
Second, maybe the reason why we don't see more of cheaper competitors is because they don't really do much outside of games, which makes them a very niche product category that people purchase because they are cheap, not necessarily because they are good. The closest analogy I can make for the Vision Pro is that it's an ipad with a larger field of view, and it's no secret here that I really do love my iPad, and I do a fair amount of stuff on it. For example, when preparing for my lessons, I can have 3 documents open side-by-side on my 11" iPad Pro (notability in split screen mode, and the app itself lets you view 2 documents together). Now imagine being able to blow that up on a giant wall, while also having mind node (a mind mapping app) open on one and, and another note-taking app in the other side (that was kinda how I studied when I was attending a 4-month course last year). My lecturer gave us notes to read, I would make highlights and annotations on my iPad, jot them down as bullet points in notes, and finally map out them in mind node to make sense of what I was reading. This is what happens when I have not "studied" for over 10 years.
I would normally need at least an iPad and a MBA (or iMac) for this, but now, it seems like I can consolidate them all into 1 headset that doesn't need to take up space on a table already cluttered with food and drinks. The caveat is that this sample use case is purely theoretical, and I have no idea how well it will work in real life (there's the supposed fatigue of wearing it for extended periods of time, there's the ease of input, and of course, the battery life).
In all, I feel the technology is fundamentally there. The challenging part is when change, especially if you personally need to change, requires you to rewire your brain and change the way you do things. That’s very real and very hard and why some get uncomfortable or defensive.
This is why I argue that the biggest change that will happen is not with the Vision Pro platform or apps. That change has happened. What needs to happen is the cultural change that will
permit the technology change to happen.
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