For $3500 nah
Well survive without buying it too
If you were to ask me what problem Apple's mixed reality headset solves, I would say it addresses the matter of consuming content on a smaller display. Even the biggest TV in your living room is just that - a screen that only shows you that much viewable and useable space, and can easily set you back 5 digits. This headset gives me a wider field of view than even the largest screen I can think of (short of actually stepping into an IMAX theatre), all from the convenience of my living room.
It's a luxury, that's for sure, but also a very nice one too.
Apple Watch isn’t really a great example. It’s a fitness tracker. Its value is obvious. Johnny Ive tried to make it jewelry too but failed.
If this is all about having a big virtual screen? If that’s the whole pitch? It’s finished before the race even starts.
There's quite a bit here to question. Apple generally executes products well, but I feel like there are major possible issues with this product that are not trivial:
- Gesturing in the air has to be 100% accurate. This will be a new way of interacting with every aspect of the OS.
- How well will it work with different skin colors, people with skin conditions (like vitiglio)?
- How well will it work in low-light conditions (like an overnight airplane?)
- How small can the gestures be and still be recognized (you can imagine flailing around in an airplane/train/bus and not seeing you potentially hitting your neighbour is a problem).
- How precise will interacting with just your hands be? You can imagine navigating complex interfaces will be cumbersome if the tracking is not as good as a mouse.
- Lastly, what are the limitations of gestures? Because inputting information right now seems to be handled by voice input, which for many seems worse than a keyboard and mouse. And yes, I know a kb/mouse can be hooked up, but that's more gear to carry around, and you wont always be able to see the location of these devices if you're 100% immersed.
- Is the cable removable, and are other standard battery packs usable?
- Can the headset be used with glasses, and without the special zeiss optics? Many VR headsets have enough space to allow for this currently.
- Does it include a travel case, and how portable is the entire device, on the go?
- Will Siri/Voice input be good enough?
- How does the mac integration work? Will it work as well as multiple monitors hooked up to a mac wrt latency, refresh rate, and color accuracy?
Get this on release day or wait for version 2 with Dynamic Island tho?
Everyone will be wearing $3500 VR glasses? Dude my MacBook Pro m1max didn’t break this price and that didn’t exactly fly off the shelves.
Looks cool, can’t afford it. Would be ok with a cheaper version that was less powerful, that relied on an iOS device just to use for the home theatre experience.
The battery looks about as functional as it could have been without attaching directly to the head, but two hours seems brief. However, I’d imagine most would use it at a desk or a couch, so no biggie.
Gaming seems like it could be cool, but I’ve yet to be impressed with mobile gaming from phones, personally.
Would like to try it, and I suppose it could be worth it for some... but there‘s no practical purpose for my needs, I’d just want it to watch movies in the recliner, and for that money, I could build an actual home theatre.
It looks great on the demo, and it looks like the future. It is certainly much more expensive than Meta Quest Pro, but it looks a far better product as well. However, I have some (many) doubts about the viability of this product, which also reflects your thoughts. Apple, being the huge company it is, has probably addressed each of them. Or has Apple become too self-indulgent for this?
Anyway, here are my concerns:
1. FUNCTIONALITY
The demo is just beautiful. However, I may have noticed some lag. Will it work well? Will the input work well? Is it comfortable for wearing for hours? It is an ambitious product, but it if fails to work well enough, it may flop even if it sells well at the beginning.
2. PRICE
If you ask me, I would say it is a bargain. If it works as intended, it is just like the ultra-high-tech equipment you can only see in futuristic movies worn by multi-billionaires, except it costs $3,500 and not the dozens of billion dollars you might think of.
Still, $3,500 is a lot of money and most people cannot afford it. You may say it is a luxury product. Well, it is, but Apple needs to sell to the masses if it wants to convince developers to make new software that supports it. If it does not have exclusive software and has to rely on iPhone apps, what is the point of having it?
How many people can afford to pay $3,500 for it? In the U.S., where the average income is about $70,000 a year or so, people are already finding paying 5% of that too expensive for the Vision Pro. The global average income is less than $10,000, and the Vision Pro will probably cost more in other countries than in the U.S.
When Apple launched the iPhone, it cost $599 in the U.S. The first iPad cost $499. They might have been expensive at the time, but at least they were affordable. They had shortcomings and trade-offs, and that probably made them cheaper. Apple had to cut certain corners to keep the prices reasonable. Many people around the world cannot buy an iPhone or an iPad even today (when prices are lower than that for basic models), but Apple still sells them in huge numbers which allows it to keep an ecosystem with developers making and updating multiple profitable apps.
But can Apple sell enough Vision Pros at $3,500 to make them a viable ecosystem?
3. SOCIAL FACTOR
I know many people who bought the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the MacBook Air, or the iMac because they were cool. Taking an iPhone out of the pocket is cooler than doing that with an Android phone. The Vision Pro does not look cool; it looks nerdy.
4. THE NOVELTY
How many people will buy it at $3,500 on the first outing and without having it tested thoroughly? I mean, the Google Glass looked far cooler and never passed the test stage to make it to the final consumer. Apple is being really bold.
