You can kind of see where Apple was going with the marketing. It wouldn't have been enough to just sell it to industry and education; they needed to demonstrate how it could (ventually) make a difference in people's personal lives too. The pricing was just too high to achieve anything close to mass adoption and it didn't gel with buyers.
The device itself though is anything but a failure at what it does though. Not everything has to be a commercial success. Indeed sometimes its nice to see companies just making cool **** again.
Think back to Sony at the turn of the century. In 1999 they released a robot dog that didn't sell more than 100,000 units but it was cool-as and crucially gave people the impression Sony were ahead of their time which helps them sell more TVs. They then went on to release a box that could beam Live TV over the internet to a PocketPC, PSP or Laptop years before Slingbox or Netflix and when the web could barely manage it. Japan used to be the envy of the west for all this kind of stuff, from the internet gaming services of the NES and SNES to 3G and Camera phones when they seemed esoteric.
Its ok if Vision Pro doesn't sell well. Its ok if they screwed up the marketing. Its hardware developments (eg LiDAR) helped make other products better and unlike Aibo as a pleb you can walk into a store and at least have a demo and form an opinion without having to buy one. Does it solve any problems? No. Will most of us buy one? No. Is it a well made product? Heck, yes. It proves Apple still have the ability to make something interesting in an industry that doesn't anymore and that should be enough.
The device itself though is anything but a failure at what it does though. Not everything has to be a commercial success. Indeed sometimes its nice to see companies just making cool **** again.
Think back to Sony at the turn of the century. In 1999 they released a robot dog that didn't sell more than 100,000 units but it was cool-as and crucially gave people the impression Sony were ahead of their time which helps them sell more TVs. They then went on to release a box that could beam Live TV over the internet to a PocketPC, PSP or Laptop years before Slingbox or Netflix and when the web could barely manage it. Japan used to be the envy of the west for all this kind of stuff, from the internet gaming services of the NES and SNES to 3G and Camera phones when they seemed esoteric.
Its ok if Vision Pro doesn't sell well. Its ok if they screwed up the marketing. Its hardware developments (eg LiDAR) helped make other products better and unlike Aibo as a pleb you can walk into a store and at least have a demo and form an opinion without having to buy one. Does it solve any problems? No. Will most of us buy one? No. Is it a well made product? Heck, yes. It proves Apple still have the ability to make something interesting in an industry that doesn't anymore and that should be enough.