If you understand why a product is successful, then you will understand why this one is half baked.
- The iPhone does what many highly successful products do: Convergence. It brought many separated, yet integral parts of human society into one highly portable, highly functional device. You can send off an email while browsing the web, listening to music, making a phone call, and rapid messaging (SMS/AIM/etc) other people. From day one, it was the Communicator from Star Trek. It brought a fantastical and futuristic desire into complete reality. It essentially became the Internet Communicator many laughed at during the keynote.
- It spurs and accidentally creates whole new industries. Uber, AirBnB, Device Management (Router Manager, Steam, Ecobee, PS App, etc), ultra-Social Media, Directly Portable Weather Awareness, etc. The iPhone did it all and then created a whole new platform for business to seek wealth.
- Commerce itself. Think about how often you buy from Amazon, Best Buy, or a new online only business from your phone? No longer do you have to wait till you get home and browse from your laptop or desktop when out to dinner. You can just buy it there. Ultra-Convenience creates Ultra-Impules Purchasing. No more need for a retailer to hold predictable sales days centered around the important calendar days. "25% for the next two hours only!" type marketing schemes can now truly be exclusive and not some gimmick used in infomercials.
- Integration with other devices. Open Safari on iPhone, your Mac can load the page straight up. Take a call on your iPad. Watch a movie on the train on your iPad, finish it at home on your TV. Media is now no longer a static environment.
- Ease of Use: The usage of the device far exceeds any other in its efficiency, convenience, and portability.
- Sociability: How does the device inspire culture. Camera app. Now, people can totally spam narcissistic level obsession with their selves, their lives, and express that to others instantly.
- Criticisms: While iPhone didn't have everything it has today at launch, it had the core experience we still use today. It still makes calls, from our pockets. It still browses the web. It's not had a major revolutionary change since the beginning. It's all been an evolutionary innovation since then.
So, lets walk through what the Vision Pro stacks up with these 6 basic metrics:
- Convergence: It does not combine separated parts of human society. It merely merges reality with a fantasy realm. The form factor does not allow for it to do anything relatively new. In fact, the form factor is a step backwards. It is bulky and static. It in fact makes some parts of the iPhone/iPad/Mac lesser easy to control due to the HID being your hands, which are tactile. We are used to turning knobs, sliding sliders, pressing buttons. The simulacrum is lost when you're not actually touching the device you are interacting with. On an iPhone, the buttons as simulacra, represent the analogues of yesterday. But just tapping wildly into the air gives no instantaneous tactile feedback other than a visual one, which can become confusing. How often do you stare at the phone every time to slide to answer? It actually diverges the user from the UX.
- New Industries: What whole new industry is VR/AR other than a media industry? How do you turn this device into productivity software? Are you going to be ok typing on the air? What if you miss a key? I can quickly slide my right hand towards Delete/Backspace and know where the key is instinctively as I am touching physical objects in space. So, its primary directive is consuming content, not creating it. Creating content is a secondary or even tertiary directive due to the UX.
- Commerce: I do not see myself buying anything outside of an App Store on this thing. "What about seeing if a table fits in your kitchen before buying it?" IKEA iPhone app does that without buying the headset. And if it doesn't fit with that, I can return it due to generous return policies. Everyone acts like it's the 1980s with Caveat Emptor, no returns.
- Integration: Wow, it can load a webpage from Safari on my iPhone. My Mac does that, as does my iPad, too. Nothing new. Just a new screen to buy. Wow, I can have my desktop loaded onto it. HP is selling a $200 1080p monitor, too that does the same thing for pennies on the dollar in comparison. Oh no, I have to use a mouse and keyboard. My life is ruined.
- Ease of Use: Speaking of screens, my TV can be enjoyed by as many can fit in the room facing it. Only one person can use the Apple Vision Pro at a time. "But you can SharePlay what you're doing to the TV!" Yay, I get to sit and watch someone else do something. Like work on his new novel. Or the movie he's watching....which he could stop being selfish and take the damned thing off and watch it with the rest of us. "What about people who may have a family and they're using the TV?" I live alone and have three TVs. Den, Bedroom, Study. You can't go to one of those? Saves a ton of money. "What if you want to do something privately and don't want roommates or family to see?" Don't have roommates or family. Orrrrrr...LOCK THE DOOR.
- Sociability: Yeah, I totally want to hang out with someone wearing a scuba mask. Even if just FaceTiming, we can do that, again, on other cheaper devices.
- Criticisms: If you claim that being tethered to a large 2hr battery pack is the future and it'll evolve eventually, you are missing the point. Nothing this headset does anything the iPhone does better. The iPad had a larger screen. The Watch fits on your wrist and tracks health metrics. What's the innovation? Smaller? Like eyeglasses? Here comes the rub....you're not legally allowed to be doing anything other than changing music or following a map while operating a motor vehicle. This thing is now a passenger device. Can't use it while driving. Lastly, I remember when Google Glass came out. At the bar, we always avoided that guy. At least with an iPhone, you can sort of figure out you're being recorded. How do I not know he's recording the whole night? It then gets to Twitter, and now you see me and my friends drunkenly mocking our boss and he/she sees it and we're fired? It happened with someone I do know and he was being recorded from an iPhone. I do not allow myself to be recorded sober, much less drunk.
If you cannot understand these points, you are woefully destined to shell out a ridiculous amount of money for a product you'll use sparingly. How many of you use your iPad only on the couch/bed? How many use it elsewhere, like work? How many people are gonna buy 100 of these for their business to make headlines about their employees using them for productivity? And then six months in, everybody has eye strain and headaches?
