Cheaper Apple Vision Headset Might Require a Tethered iPhone or Mac

[HDFan]

Maybe they should have released a cheaper, "lower quality" version of the vision first, then made the "pro" version if it caught on. Anyway...

That wouldn't have worked. Apple is known for its high quality products. If they had released a Meta equivalent they wouldn't have gotten the massive press attention and rave reviews (with the huge reservations about cost and weight).

This certainly helps but their greatest challenge still is coming up with compelling use cases.

They are there, maybe just not for you. Still nitche cases. For frequent flyers the ability to do confidential office work, enabler for some disabilities, great way to visit remote locations when unable to due to $ or physical limitations. Some amazing educational programs such as exploring London’s Natural History Museum with Sir David Attenborough.

Vision for less than 1000$

Not possible with the displays alone running ~$456 and components alone totaling ~$1542. This doesn't include the almost 10 year development costs which would have cost billions.

Apple Vision Pro’s components cost $1,542—but that’s not the full story

The OLED displays account for more than a third of the component costs.

arstechnica.com

It's a product with no real use-case.

They exist, as above.

So far there is very little reason to buy one.

They exist, as above.

And I don't think anyone sees that front display as being useful.

Shows you status when doing software updates.

No one here has yet stepped up with anything beyond media consumption or “I want a floating monitor.”

Many have, as above.

"Apple is still struggling to maintain the disgusting profit margin for people that aren't loaded"

They may be making little if any profit as yet, see above.

I don't there's much of a margin to be had given the estimated BOM is around $1400.

yes.

Their profit margin probably isn’t as disgusting as you think it is.

Yes.

Source?

See component cost analysis above.

It doesn't allow you to do anything that you couldn't already do with another device.

Hours daily. I am continually amazed at the technology in the VP and how they have implemented it. It has its flaws (weight, glare) but for me they are insignificant compared to the pluses. When you moving out of an immersive environment it starts coming back at your lap first so you can see things like a keyboard.

1. Travel to Zimbabwe, Machu Picchu, Foz do Iguaçu without leaving your chair using the share spatial app. It gives you 90% of the visual experience for those who can't actually go there.

2. Use a 6 foot monitor from your mac

3. Play lossless music from your AirPods Pro 2 with the album cover inches from your face. Much more enjoyable.

4. Run a "Mindfullness" or other mediation app to help relax and sleep. Take a snooze by a running creek in an Oregon winter scene. See the results of the mediation if you have an Apple Watch.

5. Watch a 3D concert where the singer swings her hair in your face with AmazeVR concerts, although it is a bit creepy.

6. Explore the constellations. Grab one out of the night sky to know more about it with SkyGuide

7. Checkout which flights are landing at an airport in 3D with their plane type, where they came from, etc. with testflight

8. Explore extinct creatures with David Attenborough. Watch them in 3D in their native environment.

9. Convert your old photos into 3D ones with Spacial Media Toolkit. Just a start but shows what can be done.

10. Explore the Mars lander in 3D. Grab a part and see what it does with Exploring Mars.

11. Travel to a museum for a close look at the Mona Lisa with Art Authority museum. Explore contemporary artists with Art Universe.

12. Not a gamer but occasionally play Legos in 3D or place parts on a music store

13. Movies, some in 3D, of course with Apple TV and Disney Plus. Much better than going to the theater. No fuzzy screen, better sound.

And this is just the start. More great stuff is coming.

Things to look for once VP is available in your market.

a single use case that would compel average consumers to buy it and use it regularly. Media consumption and “floating monitor” are pretty much it.

As above many other uses. Do agree that the everyman essential app isn't there yet.

 

[theluggage]

See component cost analysis above.

Well, that's ArsTechnica, not really a source, but they do link to their source (Omdia)

...which is a guesstimate from an analyst who provides no clue as to how it was calculated and fails to answer the big question of "how can anybody outside Apple know the commercially sensitive details of the contracts with suppliers".

I'd like to imagine that if you actually pay these analysts money for their services you get access to details of their sources, methodology, confidence intervals etc. so you can actually take their claims seriously.

Now, BOM cost of $1500 and retail price of $3500 sounds like too small a margin to get Apple out of bed (bearing in mind that BOM is only part of development/production/distribution costs). This is the Apple who until recently charged £200 for 8GB of DDR4 SODIMM RAM that you could buy retail, one-off for £80. Applying Occam's Razor to that puts the burden of proof firmly on whoever came up with that BOM cost.

 

[Mr_Ed]

The device is not for most people and it’s entitlement and arbitrary to claim it was.

No Apple Pro product is for most people—not even the iPhone Pro.

There is the enterprise (B2B) market, and the consumer (retail) market. Apple’s products, including “Pro” variants play in the consumer market. No device (or product for that matter) is for everyone so your first sentence is really a Captain Obvious moment. Someone looking for what a Porsche 911 offers won’t be satisfied with what a Toyota Camry offers, but make no mistake, all of those (911, Camry, iPhone, AVP, Pro or not) are consumer market products.

XR computing is fundamentally a more advanced and expensive computing platform than traditional computing.

Apple made a point of calling it “Spatial Computing” but whatever. How relatively expensive “XR” is does not matter at all. All your posts on this thread, no matter how long they are, actually illustrate what I said in the post you replied to:

I’m still surprised and amused by the number of posts wanting to talk about the specs of the current AVP or spec changes to “improve it” and drive up sales without ever describing a single use case that would compel average consumers to buy it and use it regularly. Media consumption and “floating monitor” are pretty much it.

None of your posts illustrate in any way what a consumer can do with the AVP (or with “Spatial Computing” or XR) that is so much better with the AVP that they would be compelled to buy it and use it regularly. Apple can't do that either. Until someone can, all the talk about price, specifications, or Pro vs. not Pro are irrelevant.

 

[mandopicker101]

just go outside and look around and save the entire cost + tax

That wouldn’t be Magical and not Tim’s idea of beautiful.

 

[thebart]

I wonder how many people who use the AVP for multi monitors actually enjoy the experience or they're just doing it because damn it I spent almost 4 grand on this thing it can't just be for watching movies

I get stressed out just looking at the screen caps. I'm not even wearing the thing

 

[darngooddesign]

I wonder how many people who use the AVP for multi monitors actually enjoy the experience or they're just doing it because damn it I spent almost 4 grand on this thing it can't just be for watching movies

I get stressed out just looking at the screen caps. I'm not even wearing the thing

The xrOS 2.0 changes make the Mac monitor experience a lot nicer.

 

[TAJones99]

When they say cheaper $1500-$2000 lol

 

[wikiverse]

…Your lack of experience with the device is tremendously showing. Your statements about inputs the Vision Pro supports are absolutely false.

It seems you haven’t used the device extensively whatsoever:

Like the iPad which it shares apps with, it supports all bluetooth keyboards was well as trackpads (1.0) and mice (2.0) when used in standalone modes in addition to whatever input devices connected to Macs when you have their input and video transferred to the Vision Pro (including trackball mice and space mouse)

The Vison Pro can be indefinitely connected to be on for as long as you like with or without a power bank.

It has creative professional level HDR and color support to work by itself for with Apple’s other prosumer hardware by design.

It absolutely reduces the need to use an iPad Pro in many cases and it certainly can be more convenient and contextually appropriate to use than a iPad, phone, and Macbook/Mac Pro.

For example it is better than the iPad in a wide variety of ways for 2nd screen use cases in addition to being able to consume/render 3D movies at professional quality.

Hands only navigation makes a variety of computing use cases like reference tasks trivial that you can’t do so as well with a phone or iPad for example. Whether that’s cooking or multitasking in a matter you don’t have both hands available at the same time—able to consume or be productive with one hand or have both hands not occupied with a physical input device while occupied but still benefiting from computing tech is invaluable (important for the OS’s use for AR glasses as well)

It is a more convenient means to compute in tight spaces than all of Apple’s other devices with its 5K (standalone), 4K (when mirroring Intel or amd Macs today), or 5K2K Ultrawide (2.0) modes

It also is invaluable to compute privately in a matter you cannot with Apple’s other prosumer hardware.

It obviously supports XR/AR experiences like WebVR and 3D content in a matter the other Apple products cannot like WebXR experiences. This is meaningful for people with great spatial memory/intelligence which makes the computing platform appealing.

It doesn’t have hardware ray-tracing which is its glaring gap between M3+ Apple devices besides TBD compatibility with Apple Intelligence besides its existing use of AI via its neural engine with its M2 chip.

Congratulations. You've just described... a monitor. You're disagreeing with everyone saying otherwise, but then write an essay about all the amazing capabilities it has... as a monitor.

No one said it couldn't work with a keyboard or mouse, but those things are not included, and if you have to carry them around in addition to the Vision Pro, then you might as well carry an iPad or Macbook that has the screen built-in. Without those additional input devices, it is incapable of being a productivity device.

If a cheaper version requires tethering to an iPhone or Mac, then it is just a monitor and you might as well just use the monitor on the device.

The point of a wearable device is portability. Airpods are portable. iPhone is portable. Apple Watch, iPad, MBP are portable. VP is not portable. It's heavy and takes up a backpack amount of space. It is tethered to a battery, which only has 2 hours of battery life - not even long enough to watch Apple produced movies on AppleTV+.

So, it's a device to be used for short periods at home or at work. But if I need a giant screen in addition to my MPB, I can just Airplay to a television and get effectively the same thing. No wires, No tehters, no setup... Free.

You can argue the technical specifcations to everyone all day long. But it doesn't change the simple and obvious fact that it is just a monitor and it doesn't have a real-world use case.

 

[darngooddesign]

When they say cheaper $1500-$2000 lol

They said cheaper, not cheap, and that would be a significant price reduction.

 

[lilkwarrior]

No one said it couldn't work with a keyboard or mouse, but those things are not included, and if you have to carry them around in addition to the Vision Pro, then you might as well carry an iPad or Macbook that has the screen built-in. Without those additional input devices, it is incapable of being a productivity device.

…No, your inexperience with the use of the Vision Pro is clearly obvious: The Vision Pro, like the iPad and iPhone, has a core experience that doesn't need a keyboard and mouse; for specific productivity tasks like typing at length, you can connect a keyboard and/or mouse.

No different than the iPhone Pro, iPad Pro, and other screen-centric devices for their UX beneficial not needing a keyboard and mouse all the time.

It's a personal problem if you can't be productive without a keyboard and mouse–especially with the Vision Pro's critically-acclaimed eye tracking that alleviates needing such things compared to any standalone headset in the market; there's absolutely value in that in addition to its keyboard and mouse support.

Vision Pro is more convenient than an iPad Pro or Macbook Pro in several ways as discussed; being compatible with the same apps as iPad Pro, people unsurprisingly often report using the iPad Pro less as a result of having a Vision Pro contrary to your opinion inconsistent with hundreds of reviews and verified Vision Pro owners. That's certainly been the case with me with my M4 and past gen iPad Pros.

You're narrow-mindness shows you have limited use for spatial computing at the moment, no different than people attempting to say the iPad Pro is incapable of productivity for them because their specific use cases aren'tmet.

You can't design nor please eveyrone with the focuses of a prosumer device.

If a cheaper version requires tethering to an iPhone or Mac, then it is just a monitor and you might as well just use the monitor on the device.

…You clearly have not used the Vision Pro at length to see such BS. A Vision Pro offers a 5K native, 4K or 5K2K (4K ultrawide) mirroring experience far more convenient for a wide variety of compting use cases a fixed screen on a iPhone and Mac can provide.

Prosumers for example often need benefit tremendously from the privacy and flexibilty of the canvas a Vision Pro enables–especially creatives working on work that will be on responsive design layouts (i.e. Web and graphic designers).

A bigger canvas than your Mac and iPhone to get things a variety of things done + easier multi-tasking of several apps at once enables optimal productivity for people with great spatial memory which is one of the appeals of spatial computing in general.

People who work on sensitive, need-to-know benefit from a prosumer screen that only you can see–especially for on-the-go productiivity without the hassle or limitations of privacy sceen filters and so on that impacts color and HDR performance.

The Vision Pro enables prosumer-quality 3D consumption and ideal HDR performance to audit a wide variety of productive creative work and consume premium home video in flexible and high-end ways distinct from Apple's other prosumer hardware–all the way better than the $2500 Studio Display regardless.

The point of a wearable device is portability. Airpods are portable. iPhone is portable. Apple Watch, iPad, MBP are portable. VP is not portable. It's heavy and takes up a backpack amount of space.

…Yet again your lack of experience of prosumer headsets is showing. Heavy is extremely subjective and relative with the Vision Pro being lighter than several mainstream headsets–such as Meta's lackluster prosumer standalone headset, the Quest Pro (600-650g vs 722g) and even the non-standalone Valve Index!

It's merely definitively heavier than non-prosumer headsets, which is unsurprising given how much those headsets compromise towards being middling/medicore headsets that have not caught on with their target audience at a consistently profitable matter if at all–Meta has lost 4 billion dollars selling their mobile-class-APU quest headsets at a loss.

There's trade-offs that has worked in the favor of the Vision Pro to have the design and critic review acknowledgement of mee

Also the headset does not take up a backpack amount of space; Apple designed it in a modular way to ensure that it doesn't.

Here's the bag I use for my Vision Pro that is as small in width as a PS5 Dualsense Pro controller and smaller than most handbags that this very site covered:

WaterField Vision Pro Shield Case Is Half the Size of Apple's Travel Case

WaterField Designs has announced its own Vision Pro Shield Case, a more compact alternative to Apple's official $199 Travel Case for the...

www.macrumors.com

You seem to think the travel case is for everyday use case despite the name creative professionals and other prosumers know to distinguish from other cases.

You see, I think it's helpful to others to point out your falsehoods and narrow-minded views on the device that seem to make it pretty clear you're not the target audience, you don't have the need for such device, and you're criticisms clearly seem to be based on recounting concerns and subjective accounts and echo chambers instead of actual experience and concerns from actually using the device.

 

[subjonas]

No one here has yet stepped up with anything beyond media consumption or “I want a floating monitor.”

Is that an attempt to denigrate the utility of being able to have very large productive displays in the infinite number of places that isn’t one’s desk? If so, that’s very odd.

 

[subjonas]

"Gurman says that Apple is still struggling to bring the cost down while retaining key features."
Let me translate this from Apple to English.
"Apple is still struggling to maintain the disgusting profit margin for people that aren't loaded"

How much profit do they make per unit?

 

[Mr_Ed]

Is that an attempt to denigrate the utility of being able to have very large productive displays in the infinite number of places that isn’t one’s desk? If so, that’s very odd.

You just described “floating monitors”, but if I refer to a “floating monitor”, you think that is “denigrating”?
That is very odd.

 

[subjonas]

You just described “floating monitors”, but if I refer to a “floating monitor”, you think that is “denigrating”?
That is very odd.

It was a question. From the way you phrased "I want a floating monitor" it sounded like you might think it's not a useful thing to want. But apparently not.

 

[Mr_Ed]

It was a question. From the way you phrased "I want a floating monitor" it sounded like you might think it's not a useful thing to want. But apparently not.

I think the context (use cases) was clear enough in the sentence directly preceding the text you quoted, but you decided to cut that off and comment on the last part.

For the record, I use multiple monitors and I think that is useful. Some of mine are pretty good size (34” 21:9 ratio). I do things that often require multiple windows open across multiple monitors, and a fair amount of typing.

Do I think I could do what I need to do faster, more comfortably, or be any more productive while trying to do it with something like an AVP strapped to my head? Absolutely not. And it’s not even close.

 

[subjonas]

I think the context (use cases) was clear enough in the sentence directly preceding the text you quoted, but you decided to cut that off and comment on the last part.

Quoting the preceding text wasn't necessary. It was clear you were giving media consumption and "I want a floating monitor" as exceptions to the lack of use cases. But again, instead of just saying "media consumption and floating monitor", you added the "I want a" before floating monitor, possibly implying that it's something you acknowledge only as a use case that the proponents of the VP claim, but not one that you’re willing to acknowledge as compelling or legit. Your last post further supports that impression.

For the record, I use multiple monitors and I think that is useful. Some of mine are pretty good size (34” 21:9 ratio). I do things that often require multiple windows open across multiple monitors, and a fair amount of typing.

Do I think I could do what I need to do faster, more comfortably, or be any more productive while trying to do it with something like an AVP strapped to my head? Absolutely not. And it’s not even close.

I'm not sure why you're comparing the VP's floating monitor to a nice desktop setup. Everyone should agree that the VP’s floating monitor doesn’t have much advantage (if any at all) if you only work at a nice desktop setup. I even said in my last post that the use case is everywhere that isn't your desk. That will be an important use case to some more than others.

 

[Mr_Ed]

Quoting the preceding text wasn't necessary. It was clear you were giving media consumption and "I want a floating monitor" as exceptions to the lack of use cases. But again, instead of just saying "media consumption and floating monitor", you added the "I want a" before floating monitor, possibly implying that it's something you acknowledge only as a use case that the proponents of the VP claim, but not one that you’re willing to acknowledge as compelling or legit. Your last post further supports that impression.

Paraphrasing what many in MR have put forth as a compelling use case when asked to provide one, which is what that post was doing.

I'm not sure why you're comparing the VP's floating monitor to a nice desktop setup. Everyone should agree that the VP’s floating monitor doesn’t have much advantage (if any at all) if you only work at a nice desktop setup. I even said in my last post that the use case is everywhere that isn't your desk. That will be an important use case to some more than others.

Glad you and I agree on the desktop setup but not everyone in MR agrees. Some even suggest it would be great to have multiple monitors in AVP rather than real ones. I make the comparison because if using the AVP could improve productivity, then even I might find it compelling, at least for work. The AVP is expensive and you have to wear it on your face, so it can’t just do “as well” as the alternative tools. It has to be better to be compelling.