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Apple's Unusual Headset Design Has Led to Unprecedented Production Challenges

It’s hard to design, hard to develop and hard to manufacture…still it’s a useless device, just like the Apple Watch.

How many of you just use Apple Watch like a regular watch?🤣 I do! And when you want to check time you find it already dead no battery on your wrist…
 
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sw1tcher said:
Another added expense for those who wear glasses.
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A valid point. If true, it's interesting that Apple didn't just build in some sort of diopter adjustment mechanism. Clearly, they want glasses wearers to have a visual experience that can only be provided by prescription correction. I suspect the lenses will have to be tailored for the distance of the displays, but how will you get them? Will it require a visit to an optician, and how much will that cost?

Still, I'm excited to finally see these come out into the open.
 
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citysnaps said:
Seriously?

So therefore it's going to flop?
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Where did I say the product is "going to flop?"

My response was to whether or not it will be a revolutionary moment.

TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ said:
Do you guys think we will get this revolutionary moment with Apple AR/VR headset?
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For me, a revolutionary moment is when something will dramatically change/improve our lives. I don't see this headset dramatically changing/improving my life just like how AirPods didn't dramatically change/improve my life (our lives?) even though AirPods are a successful product.
 
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So I can't keep my glasses on to wear this thing?! What?

I need to get lenses made? Yikes.

They really don't want this to sell do they?
 
Too bad the renders don’t look like this.

46f0c4d7fbf0d181b0a474a071e99b70.jpg
 
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Lounge vibes 05 said:
The original iPhone was hard to produce.
Anyone remember the story of Steve Jobs at the very last minute demanding it have a glass screen instead of a plastic one?
The original iPhone had absolutely no third-party compatibility.
The original iPhone was basically useless in the enterprise market, no Microsoft exchange support, no MMS, no third-party applications. BlackBerry already dominated this market.
The original iPhone was entering a market that was very much not mature. There were iPods, there were pocket PCs, and there were primitive smart phones, but nothing like the iPhone.
The original iPhone had some very famous doubters, Steve Ballmer included. There was even an entire different team inside of Apple that were developing a click wheel powered iPod phone just in case the touchscreen OS didn’t work out.
if anything, the original iPhone had an even harder job selling itself to become a big product.
There were 1 billion phones sold in 2006, a year before the iPhone launched.
The iPhone launched several hundred dollars more expensive than any other phone on the market, as an AT&T exclusive, and only in… *checks notes*… oh yeah, US only for its first several months on the market.
In its first year, Apple only sold 6 million iPhones in six countries.
So yeah… I’d say these products have plenty of similarities.
The original iPhone was not the instant absolutely world conquering success people like to think it was.
I’d even argue it wasn’t even the 3G or 3GS that did it, although it’s undeniable, they were way more successful than the original.
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A lot of these points are ridiculous, and grasping at things. How do you know the iPhone was hard to produce? You say there were a billion phones sold in 2006, but nobody is buying VR headsets. And $599 is a lot different than $3,000.

The entire point of Steve's iPhone debut is that phones up to that point were pretty terrible to use, and this one device merged the success of the iPod with an easy to use, powerful phone, alongside a breakthrough in mobile web browsing.

This device is looking to answer a problem nobody really cares about. That's why VR isn't selling well right now. It's isolating, and nobody wants it.
 
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robbietop said:
Here is what we know so far:
  1. It's difficult to manufacture
  2. Software has been difficult to tailor for it
  3. Many executives seem to doubt market penetration and success
  4. Potential competitors have struggled in the market to grow
  5. It will be prohibitively expensive, putting it outside of average consumer affordability
  6. Not very portable, making it useless in a public use case outside of the home
  7. Most software made for the device category has been video gaming or severely niche industries requiring post-graduate education and government licensing.
So, how is this the next iPhone?
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I feel like 1-5 were all true of the original iPhone.
Re 6, all the info we have so far is that it's going to be very lightweight and have great AR passthrough...
Re 7, things will change, just like they did when the App Store was launched.

Everything we've heard so far is extremely positive imo, feature set sounds amazing!
 
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robbietop said:
Here is what we know so far:
  1. It's difficult to manufacture
  2. Software has been difficult to tailor for it
  3. Many executives seem to doubt market penetration and success
  4. Potential competitors have struggled in the market to grow
  5. It will be prohibitively expensive, putting it outside of average consumer affordability
  6. Not very portable, making it useless in a public use case outside of the home
  7. Most software made for the device category has been video gaming or severely niche industries requiring post-graduate education and government licensing.
So, how is this the next iPhone?
Click to expand...

Most of these qualities and challenges were also shared by the first gen iPhone. I would rather withhold judgement until Apple actually shows it off.
 
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The thin profile requires users who wear glasses to buy prescription lenses that magnetically clip into the headset.

So if wear glasses you’ll need to buy special glasses just to work with this device? So you have to buy another product just so it works with this product? thats a hard pass…
 
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[sarcasm] I stopped reading when I saw there is a power button on this and went right to posting a complaint about how there is a power button. Do not want!![/sarcasm]

Full disclosure, I have no issue with there being no power button on my Airpods Max.

I hope I'm the first to complain about this power button. :D
 
This seems to be one of those products that tries to solve a problem that doesn’t exist but marketing will tell us, we need it.

Feel free to quote me in 5 years if I was wrong like when you go back in time on those iPod and iPad rumor threads 😅

Curious how it will sell giving todays climate, energy crisis and what not.

I personally don’t see myself wearing those. I hardly manage to keep my subscription glasses on and all the arm waving stuff also seems exhausting. Apple also doesn’t have Super Mario or some big blockbuster franchise to push it.

Oh and I also wonder how they will demo this without making it seem like a unrealistic future vision since we obviously won’t have any previous experience to compare it with
 
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robbietop said:
Here is what we know so far:
  1. It's difficult to manufacture
  2. Software has been difficult to tailor for it
  3. Many executives seem to doubt market penetration and success
  4. Potential competitors have struggled in the market to grow
  5. It will be prohibitively expensive, putting it outside of average consumer affordability
  6. Not very portable, making it useless in a public use case outside of the home
  7. Most software made for the device category has been video gaming or severely niche industries requiring post-graduate education and government licensing.
So, how is this the next iPhone?
Click to expand...
Do we really know though? Or is just a rumour?
 
While VR seems to be a specialized application, I am looking forward to seeing these.
 
Whoa this is sounding pretty interesting…

charger attaches to the headset's left temple and runs down via a cable to a waist-mounted battery pack.
Click to expand...

aaand they lost me. Imma be waiting for the wireless variant.
 
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