Apple Vision Pro - Apple's worst product?

[maflynn]

Worst apple product? That's what this YT describes the AVP, it goes through many reasons.

I like how this YTer mentioned that where apple succeeded in a product, it was in a previously established market, i.e., MP3 players were already popular, Apple improved it with the iPod. Cell phones, were well established when the iPhone entered the market.

There was no such market for VR headsets, and then pricing it orders significantly higher then other VR headsets was a recipe for disaster.

 

[bhodinut]

I bought one. I use it every day. It's a great product. Maybe you need to actually use it more to understand it. That might be the problem with the marketing of it.

 

[MacCheetah3]

"Apple’s worst product?” I never thought about it. And I honestly doubt it.

Anyway...

The Vision Pro’s very high price is very significant and probably its biggest hurdle to the lack of ‘success’ thus far. And the presenter does a decent job explaining the likelihood behind Apple’s price tag. Although, I do want to put a side note that I ascribe little weight when people lean on supplier sources for part costs to estimate the total hardware cost for a company, such as Apple, even if they mention it does not include R&D, marketing, etc. Plus, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. My go-to question on that topic is: if it was proven Apple, for example, only profited $0.01 on a product, would you be more comfortable with the cost? The answer is likely no. To me, whether Apple profits 99% or 1%, (spending) $3,500 is the same (consideration).

Moving along...

I think a big misstep from Apple regarding Vision Pro was marketing. Jump to 4:04 in the video. AVP is a VR headset. AVP competes with VR headsets. That is somewhat true, and also only somewhat of the AVP’s strength/asset. If all you want is somewhat more immersive first-person gaming, a Meta Quest or Oculus will probably be more than satisfactory. If all you want/need is a portable or otherwise convenient large/huge/giant display, Xreal or RayNeo will probably be far more cost effective, better value. And again, the AVP can do these things. However, in my opinion, one of the biggest (as I said) missteps was not reviving the push for AR, especially to the eyes of developers.

Game Room is a fair example, I think:

Apple Arcade takes players into a new dimension with spatial gaming

Apple Arcade opens up an extraordinary catalog of games for players to enjoy on Apple Vision Pro, a revolutionary new spatial computer.

www.apple.com

Game Room - Available for cross play across Apple Vision Pro, iPhone, and iPad — Resolution Games

www.resolutiongames.com

However, I also think, Apple should have pulled forward the 2018 push, noting, for example, “Remember our amazing ARKit demos? We were able to bring things to life! Now it’s even more immersive, even more magical.” — forgive my lack of authentically imitating Tim/Steve presentation lingo/flare.

LEGO's ARKit Playgrounds app launches with NINJAGO theme after WWDC demo - 9to5Mac

LEGO today has officially launched its LEGO AR Playground app on iOS, incorporating ARKit technology to merge real LEGO sets...

9to5mac.com

I realize a lot of immersion can be fully virtual, even an app like Game Room. But some do benefit from the AR/XR immersion.

Simply Piano for Apple Vision Pro

www.hellosimply.com

VIS – Virtual Immersive Studio

VIS – Virtual Immersive Studio – is Neumann’s vision for enabling immersive audio producers to directly control Logic Pro on Mac in Apple Vision Pro. By making spatial positioning and automation intuitive, VIS unleashes a new level of speed, flexibility, and creativity.

www.neumann.com

Must-try apps for a new user?

Heh... that is, in fact, more or less exactly what I was imagining myself! But whether the image is funny or not, I have had meetings in which a less-exaggerated version of this would have been useful, and if the tools were in place you could have something pretty cool. I've found a new...

forums.macrumors.com

But it also has extremely detailed models of a nearly-complete selection of commercial aircraft, and you can extend the flaps, turn on the thrust reversers, drop the landing gear, and more. That's cool. But there's also a button to "make life sized", which is awesome. Boom, you are standing underneath a 747. Pan it around, and you're in the cockpit of a to-scale, meticulously-modeled airliner, and you can look around at all the instruments. Walking around the scale model looks so good it makes me want to go outside and drop it in the street so I can look like a crazy person wandering around looking up at the invisible airplane.

 

[Piggie]

IMHO (and others) say the problem was the marketing.
V1 was never a consumer product at a consumer price.
It should have been a dev kit, which allowed devs to create a mass of software, ready for the actual consumer version that would come later.

Stupidly and misguidedly Apple showed this off a a product ready from day 1 to be used by normal people, packing the suitcases wearing the product, chatting to their kids (taking video of them) wearing the product.

It was the wrong product at the wrong time, marketed at the wrong people at the wrong price.

You do all those things and a product, which SHOULD have potential, fails big time

 

[shenfrey]

Click bait, you’re not getting traffic from here sorry.

 

[JPack]

Everybody knew it was risky from the start. There was zero evidence of social acceptance for wearing isolating goggles. Apple knew this going in, hence the huge focus on the front display to mimic the wearer’s eyes.

But Tim Cook wanted a legacy defining product before his retirement. Vision Pro is the only computing product in the Cook era that does not revolve around Steve Jobs’ iPhone.

People are very willing to spend $3,500 on a MacBook Pro and Mac Studio. They will spend $1,000 a year on Watch. Halo products always have cheaper follow up products. There is always a trajectory to price decreases from scaling, so price wasn’t a problem. The problem Apple couldn’t solve is convincing people to wear a loner headset. How do you go from Apple products that take selfies, share videos, send emojis, and listen to music on the go to a self-isolating set of goggles with a hip battery pack?

 

[axantas]

Everybody knew it was risky from the start. There was zero evidence of social acceptance for wearing isolating goggles. Apple knew this going in, hence the huge focus on the front display to mimic the wearer’s eyes.
...

...so happyly moving on, wearing Woody Allen-style-non-isoliting goggles walking around.

 

[Coolpher]

I have had my second hand AVP M2 for 3 1/2 months and I use it on a daily basis it does everything I used to do on my iPad Pro and Mohr I can honestly say this has been my favorite Tech purchase of 2026. I can’t wait to see the improvements to come in visionOS over the years.