Buying an AVP is setting money on fire to me (certainly nothing wrong with that ... to each their own with their money)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I love mine! Yeah, $4,000 was a lot to drop on a device that’s primary function is entertainment with the ability to do some computing when necessary with a wireless keyboard and trackpad but there’s nothing like the AVP when I want to watch a movie or an episode of a good TV show and can do it in what feels like a giant cinema in the comfort of my own home. Watching 3D movies is great but when it comes to watching Immersive video made to be viewed on the device it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There is clearly a ton of potential if they can get the price down to something most consumers are willing to pay and get the form factor down to that of AR glasses.
But here’s the thing. Most of us spend money on something we don’t need. Is $4,000 a lot of money to spend inna single item for somebody like me? Yeah but when I look at my friends driving around in $50,0000 to $75,000 trucks that they don’t need for work and just use to it to get from A to B and occasionally take it off-roading they aren’t just spending $4,000 on something they don’t need, they are literally spending tens of thousands of dollars.
Hell I’ve got a divorced buddy renting an apartment, living paycheck to paycheck spending every dime he has on rent, groceries, utilities, gas, his truck and child support. The dude has a $700 a month truck payment and insurance on that thing isn’t cheap either with his driving record. Should he maybe be driving around in a used $15,000 to $25,000 vehicle that’ll last 10 years with his commute that only takes 10 minutes and out the money he’d be saving on his car payment and insurance toward owning a home that will appreciate in value plus putting money away for retirement or a rainy day fund or both You bet your a$$ he should. He spends in a few months of vehicle expenses what I paid for that device.
So that’s what irks me about the comments here. With all of the stupid crap people spend a hell if a lot more money on in total than this device, why bag on it under the pretense it has no value? It has value if you like it and no value if you don’t. It’s based on your opinion. How much am I willing to pay for an experience tantamount to a glimpse into the future as it is right now?
Like you said, to each his own, but the incessant bagging on this device when it’s clearly not meant for mainstream public consumption, while funny at first, is tiresome at this point.
It’s clear what this thing is at this point. It’s more like a beta product. So I do get the criticism but as somebody who has always loved to beta test going back to the Windows 95 days when Microsoft had a rep come to the local computer club when I was a kid before the Internet was a thing and was looking for volunteers I’ve loved to take a look at early forms of something and to play a small hand in testing it and helping to refine it so something like this was right up my alley even at its current price tag.
I don’t blame you or disagree with you if don’t feel that way. I totally get it but enough with the DOA BS in every article related to the device.
It might be well be dead. Or it could simply be exactly what Apple says it is. A product not yet ready for mass market consumption that they had to get into the hands of some consumers to gage where they are at with it. What works, what doesn’t, is there a killer app (to me there is, immersive video and apps plus spatial video and pictures), what can third party developers do, and the list goes on and on.
Even if their current hardware team’s focus is a refresh for the forthcoming M5 chip and creating a lower cost version of the device, that still means the product isn’t DOA.
With Apple’s current cash reserves alone they can float this so I’m not buying its DOA because consumers didn’t rush out to buy one. Nobody is going to sell a lot of anything at the price point in question for what at this point is primarily an entertainment device with very limited amounts of the best content.
Produce a $999 version with Apple financing at 0% interest that includes AppleCare with Accidental Damage and Theft Protection and includes AirPods with the device being in an AR Glasses form factor that includes cellular data so you can use it as a phone replacement and use it while in a social situations for things like have it identify by first and last name everyone there you know that you’re looking at as well as a million other AR type of functions you could use in that form factor and that will sell like hotcakes.