TruthAboveAllElse
macrumors 6502a
This would be a better joke if you stopped after the first sentence. It doesn't need to be explained.
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Apple Vision Pro Was Almost Called 'Reality Pro'
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Vision pro is Tim biggest flop that could be avoided. We don’t need the glass face screen that add weight and cost at the first place. We need glasses to add new dimension to our phone iPad MacBook … The spatial photo and videos technology is a breakthrough and by adding too many layers to justify the price, we missed it. The avatar technology is too early to make a serious FaceTime call … so close and yet so far … as for the name I like it …
Did they though? I bet they didn’t even cover the cost of R&D and setting up the manufacturing lines required to produce it.
I wouldn't want to be seen sitting like that wearing it by anyone.
Having said that the vision's picture is great and I can imagine many uses as a PC interface from games to work. The googles design is not comfortable enough. I am not a diver. It should be more of a hat or helmet.
Having said that the vision's picture is great and I can imagine many uses as a PC interface from games to work. The googles design is not comfortable enough. I am not a diver. It should be more of a hat or helmet.
Piggie
macrumors G3
The funny this is they saw a product sector that had been growing for many many many years.
They watched the market grow, the products getting better, with better screens and capabilities.
They saw the sector of the market where 99.9% of headsets were being sold into, and what demographic was the exact one willing to spend money, and to 'put up' with wearing a heavy thing on your face (the gaming market)
They had all this information, and then developed a high end product, TOTALLY ignoring the one single market of people who bought the headsets and who were willing to pay more for something high end.
Steve Jobs did not like gaming = Apple does not like gaming = Vison Pro could not be admitted to be build for gaming.
And guess what, the people not into VR headsets did not buy it because they are not into VR headsets.
It's amazing how you can deliberately be so arrogant, and think you know better, to decide to ignore the main/only sector that WOULD be interested in your product, basically ignore them, and focus on those who have never shown any interest in this type of product.
You are basically fighting the market / the people, and thinking you know better.
They watched the market grow, the products getting better, with better screens and capabilities.
They saw the sector of the market where 99.9% of headsets were being sold into, and what demographic was the exact one willing to spend money, and to 'put up' with wearing a heavy thing on your face (the gaming market)
They had all this information, and then developed a high end product, TOTALLY ignoring the one single market of people who bought the headsets and who were willing to pay more for something high end.
Steve Jobs did not like gaming = Apple does not like gaming = Vison Pro could not be admitted to be build for gaming.
And guess what, the people not into VR headsets did not buy it because they are not into VR headsets.
It's amazing how you can deliberately be so arrogant, and think you know better, to decide to ignore the main/only sector that WOULD be interested in your product, basically ignore them, and focus on those who have never shown any interest in this type of product.
You are basically fighting the market / the people, and thinking you know better.
Once you accept that only lightweight digital glasses are for walking and high quality but heavy googles are stationary you could make them much lighter and simply connect them to boxes on your desktop.
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Hajj.david
macrumors 6502a
The Vision Pro is not going anywhere... Apple is regularly adding new features and codebase leaks shows additional VisionOS products are being developed.
I actually strongly disagree with this and everyone else who makes this claim. It made almost exactly the splash Apple predicted it would make. They originally only produced 400k in a year and sold almost the full 400k. All of the doom and gloom articles of "slowing down production" occurs all the time even for iPhones and iPads etc because Apple's system is JIT assembly so they never have huge warehouses full of unsold product.
The results absolutely matched the name, it is by far the best VR headset on the market, what is not pro about it? The biggest customer for the Vision Pro is professional usage. Surgeons, Doctors, Engineers, Developers, etc. It also was smart for Apple to do so because it strongly indicates a much cheaper version is coming. Similar to how the first intel mac was a Mac Pro that paved the way for cheaper intel macs.
They have been working on the Vision Pro for almost 20 years and what I THINK happened is Tim Cook was like "hey this is really cool, lets do a limited market release and see what sticks". I think Apple originally thought that this would be a big hit in the entertainment space (hence the huge investment in spatial / 3D films and gaming). But I think Apple has seen that the professional and enterprise market have been using this thing as an absolute productivity beast and have been shifting their focus on that. Vision OS 26 and 27 added a MOUNTAIN (like 100s) of enterprise only APIs. And Apple invested in adding NVIDIA CloudXR for VR game streaming and Steam is currently testing Steam Link on the AVP via testflight so Apple really can turn its attention to productivity and enterprise since the market is taking care of gaming on its own.
Not that I condone degeneracy but you can enable WebXR and watch VR ... content... in safari or use the PLAY'A app which lets you watch 8K VR ...content... fully immersed like they are standing right in front of you.
I agree on the face / eyes screen. I get what they were TRYING to do but no matter what my family etc want me to take it off if I am talking to them. I will disgree on the personas, yes the first version or two was really weird but now on Vision OS 26/27 they look incredibly realistic. When doing a facetime with someone else who also has a vision pro its a transcendental experience its as if I am sitting with the person in my room and the AVP is smart enough to even fake echos or how it would sound if someone is talking in the room.
Half the people I talk to on facetime dont even realize its fake including my own mother and father. The other 40% think I just have a facetime filter on, the other 10% realize what it is.
The new band significantly helps with it but I go a step further and use a third party plastic strap on my head in addition to Apples new headband, I then remove the light seal. Doing so turns the AVP into just thick glasses. I can see my peripheral vision and the pass through is a lot sharper on the M5 version so sometimes I even forget I am wearing them. The new Apple band removes all the weight from the front and the 3rd party strap takes it off my nose completely when using it without the light seal. I can wear it for 8+ hours while working with zero strain.
I still do use the light seal if I am in bed watching a movie or something but its not as comfortable for long stretches and it doesn't let your eyes breath / you cant rub them as easily.
But Apple was right, VR gaming is in fact dying. There just isnt enough developer support for it. Look at the PSVR, the meta quest etc. However what the AVP is being used heavily in is as a virtual monitor for productivity purposes. Another popular thing is streaming games to your VR headset which Apple recently released support for Nvidia's Cloud XR, Steam link, etc in addition to the Mac Virtual Desktop.
Hajj.david
macrumors 6502a
I do think Apple could easily do this, instead of a heavy battery it can connect directly to a desktop / laptop, cut the front screen and some of the metal to lose weight, make it $999 and bobs your uncle.
Also for anyone concerned about the price you can get the M2 vision pro for around 1.5-2k on ebay.
Mainyehc
macrumors 6502a
You also forgot to mention that the dedicated spatial co-processor itself retained the “Reality” branding inspiration, in the form of the R1 name. They didn’t rebrand it as V1 (which, considering how visual cortex areas are named, would be both an interesting nod to it and confusing).
Squidiey
macrumors regular
Kinda reminds me of Sega Megadrive being renamed to Sega Genesis in the US.
Apple recently raising the price of the Vision Pro is the ultimate flex.
Well... let's see. Apple sold roughly 500,000 AVPs at around $3,500 to $3,600.
500,000 x $3,500 = 1,750,000,000, or $1.75 billion dollars. I would guess that was enough for R&D, setting up manufacturing, COGS, and returning a decent profit.
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Hajj.david
macrumors 6502a
The fact that Apple didnt do a price drop to $1,999 strongly indicates to me they are happy at the pace it is selling at. Ziess even said they have a very limited production ability for the glass lenses Apple is making, Apple sold almost 100% of their capacity.
turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
To me they simply don't want to lose any more money on it than they already have.
The show is over even if some folks want to watch all the credits and wait to be asked to leave.
Hajj.david
macrumors 6502a
These are old numbers I am seeing articles indicating 600k m5s were sold and around 450k m2s were sold
True. I went with the middle to be conservative. Otherwise some here would be saying I inflated the numbers to make Apple look good.
VisceralRealist
macrumors 65816
"VisionPro" is a much better name. Three syllables with emphasis on the first syllable rolls off the tongue much more smoothly than an awkward, clunky five-syllable name with emphasis on the second syllable. "Reality" also reminds people of "virtual reality", which was not the main use case for it.
That said, this thing is going to be discontinued so hard.
That said, this thing is going to be discontinued so hard.
J.J. Sefton
macrumors regular
I'm still hoping for iPhone Socks Pro and iPhone Socks Ultra.
There are two types of leakers these days. Those pretending to know about things that never happened and never will happen and those pretending to know what’s going to happen that also never will happen.
If you think I’ve left out “those that actually have leaked information from Apple”, no I didn’t. 🙂
If you think I’ve left out “those that actually have leaked information from Apple”, no I didn’t. 🙂
I mean, neither the iPhone, iPad nor the Mac can be considered “affordable mainstream products”. Why would anyone expect otherwise for anything Apple releases?
Oh, it had exactly the splash in the market they intended. Every other headset after it looks like it, and every headset before it changed their UI to work like it. When they release their next iteration, the way it looks and works will be familiar to anyone that has owned a competing product. Less friction onboarding.
Quest would still be joysticks only if the AVP didn’t exist. And, their passthrough would still be a horrendous gelatinous mess.
Nothing can propel a product if Sony’s unable to make enough screens for it. I haven’t heard anything that indicates they’ve been able to increase their yields over 1 million a year (roughly 500,000 pairs a year accounting for failures post testing).
They care because they feel Apple should have spent that money on a small phone or airports or something else they don’t make anymore. 🙂
turbineseaplane
macrumors Penryn
It's hard being in the AVP club and loving something that isn't selling up to Apple's desires for long term interest.
Believe me, I relate to your pain folks.
I'm an iPhone Mini user.
Believe me, I relate to your pain folks.
I'm an iPhone Mini user.
Apple doesn’t sell at a loss. 🙂 With 8 billion people in the world and Sony being a limiting factor on how many they’d be able to make, they already had a good idea of how many they would sell. As a result, they knew how much each would have to cost to turn a decent ROI and priced it at that.
They sold out the first year and that would have been $1,759,500,000 in revenue assuming they were all the lower storage ones. With a healthy mix of the higher storage ones, then it’s even higher. If they sold another half million in the second year, that’s a fairly massive return on R&D they had been performing (and charging off) for years.