Gurman: Apple Could Release $2,000 'Apple Vision' Headset Next Year

[bgillander]

It’s all about perspective. I keep reading the Apple Watch is a failure. But if you took the watch out of Apple as its own business it would be a highly profitable Fortune 500 company. But yet it’s still a ‘failure’ in the eyes of many.

Again, I would say we agree.

My point on that one was that, especially for the AVP, there are many people I know that want it, but just cannot justify the expense.

I never buy first generation Apple products, but this is one I am still considering. It wasn't introduced in Canada until a few months ago, though, so that delay and the early rumor of a chip upgrade now has me thinking I can wait, if only to see if I can get a first generation for less when gen 2 drops. I know it is definitely champagne and I realize my budget should be beer or even water, but "want" is by no means the issue.

 

[CBlakeston]

True. I'm just finding it annoying that people seem to think Apple could have easily made a better headset, while the reality is they had a difficult time just making this one. The AVP is the best they could do at the time.

Did they introduce it too soon? Possibly, but that is again an issue with first generation and early adoption... timing. How long do you keep working on a product, especially one that is quite driven by the software produced by third party developers? If the timing is wrong, the product seems like a failure (at the very least initially), but if the product is a success, the iterations usually quickly make the first edition look like an antique. But if they get the first version out there and inspire some developers, there is a chance there will be software to inspire potential purchasers of the second generation. This has been normal for decades, though it apparently isn't common in the 21st century (and all this AVP fuss has only now made me realize this).

Either way, it is an interesting product and it just seems weird to me that so many would have such a fervent loathing of a product just because it doesn't appeal to them. I assume they don't go down to car dealerships every fall and tell the salespeople all the models they don't care for and the features that could be better, but the threads like this one do make me wonder.

I think part of it is the polarised age in which we live in. People see a product that’s expensive they can’t afford or will likely not by and therefore hate it on sight and want to destroy it because it’s unattainable. Because if it’s GOOD then it’s something they are missing out on. You just have to look at the current conversation surrounding the PS5 Pro to find the same thing.

There are a lot of great conversations to be had around the Vision Pro and what gen 1 got right and wrong. But that’s unfortunately drowned out by the SUCKS, NOT THAT SPECIAL ANYWAY crowd.

 

[CBlakeston]

Again, I would say we agree.

My point on that one was that, especially for the AVP, there are many people I know that want it, but just cannot justify the expense.

I never buy first generation Apple products, but this is one I am still considering. It wasn't introduced in Canada until a few months ago, though, so that delay and the early rumor of a chip upgrade now has me thinking I can wait, if only to see if I can get a first generation for less when gen 2 drops. I know it is definitely champagne and I realize my budget should be beer or even water, but "want" is by no means the issue.

Affordable is a funny thing. I have buddies that will spend thousands on a week holiday drinking in the sun. Thats really not for me. I’d rather buy tech.

People fly first class all the time when they could fly coach. That’s about the price of a Vision Pro.

For me, I followed the hype when it launched in the US but my enthusiasm had died down but the time it hit the UK. Seemed very cool but decided I didn’t need it. Rather get an M4 studio next year with that money.

Than I tried a demo at the Apple Store almost by accident when I returned an iPhone 16 case and it pretty much changed my life. I more or less walked out with one. You can look at the specs on paper and say it’s just like a quest but the EXPERIENCE is a world of difference.

It’s like comparing a switch to desktop Mac. One is a toy for games and the other is productivity tool.

It’s also an easy business decision. The Pro Display XDR I need to edit HDR content is £6000 with stand. The AVP connects to a Mac as a HDR display. So I can edit HDR content in Final Cut using it for just over half the price.

 

[bgillander]

Glad to see the project won’t be abandoned by apple if this is true that a low end version is in the works.

I think this product died as soon as it was released however I got mine for all the 3d movies and I think the immersion content is excellent but such a new category that it’s such a small tease for now.

Why are more movie titles not in 3d yet? Seems odd that apple releases such a potentially great product yet falls short on content for it. All the titles on iTunes that supported 3d releases should already be available yet maybe 5% or less are.

This is one reason folks have claimed this to be a failed apple product.

Yeah, I don't have an AVP and was trying to figure out how much of my iTunes library would be available in 3D, and they don't make it obvious, as I don't believe Apple show the 3D indicator anywhere other than on the AVP, which strikes me as a lost opportunity for Apple.

I saw a post where someone mentioned CheapCharts, though, and they do allow you to filter iTunes movies by 3D on their website, so I thought I would mention that in case anyone else is trying to figure out how to see what is actually available in 3D without looking directly on an AVP. They do give sale alerts, too, so that was a bonus!

https://www.cheapcharts.info/

 

[CBlakeston]

Yeah, I don't have an AVP and was trying to figure out how much of my iTunes library would be available in 3D, and they don't make it obvious, as I don't believe Apple show the 3D indicator anywhere other than on the AVP, which strikes me as a lost opportunity for Apple.

I saw a post where someone mentioned CheapCharts, though, and they do allow you to filter iTunes movies by 3D on their website, so I thought I would mention that in case anyone else is trying to figure out how to see what is actually available in 3D without looking directly on an AVP. They do give sale alerts, too, so that was a bonus!

https://www.cheapcharts.info/

Cheap charts has made me spend so much money over the years. 😀

In the Vision Pro itself there’s a specific 3ad section with hundreds of movies. I’m sure someone must have written them down somewhere? Disney + has a list that’s out of about 40ish.

It’s also worth pointing out the Vision Pro is the first device to support True Cut Motion for movies which is a big deal if you’re into how movies are presented.

Honestly I’d have spent £3500 on a new OLED TV and this is way better and has way more functionality 😀

TrueCut Motion – Pixelworks

www.truecutmotion.com

 

[bgillander]

Affordable is a funny thing. I have buddies that will spend thousands on a week holiday drinking in the sun. Thats really not for me. I’d rather buy tech.

People fly first class all the time when they could fly coach. That’s about the price of a Vision Pro.

Again, we agree.

I never fly first class and I doubt my banker would say an AVP is well within my means, but tech is my weakness (and 3D media, which is the main reason the AVP is so appealing... I expect that the money I've spent on 3D Blu-ray over the years would have paid for the AVP, but I guess at least some of it gave me a starter 3D library in iTunes.)

 

[CBlakeston]

Again, we agree.

I never fly first class and I doubt my banker would say an AVP is well within my means, but tech is my weakness (and 3D media, which is the main reason the AVP is so appealing... I expect that the money I've spent on 3D Blu-ray over the years would have paid for the AVP, but I guess at least some of it gave me a starter 3D library in iTunes.)

Are there many 3D blu-rays not available on Vision Pro? I guess a 1080p 3D Blu-ray was essentially a 720p image for each eye so they may not exist in a quality that holds up in a Vision Pro.

 

[bgillander]

Honestly I’d have spent £3500 on a new OLED TV and this is way better and has way more functionality 😀

Again, we have common ground.

I have a 2016 LG OLED because it was the last year they made 3D TVs, and the thought of it dying adds one more push for the AVP. If I could enable it as a remote Blu-ray 3D playback screen, I think that would actually seal the deal for me.

I am still bitter at Sony for not even bothering to do a simple firmware update to enable Blu-ray 3D playback on the PS5 so that those of us that bought into their Blu-ray 3D format could at least have a playback device through the PSVR2 when our vintage 3D TVs no longer work. When it goes, I can stack the disks with my Beta, Minidisc, and D8 media, I guess. I'll throw in my HD-DVDs so it isn't just Sony and share the love with Toshiba. I can stack them all up on Laserdiscs.

 

[bgillander]

Are there many 3D blu-rays not available on Vision Pro? I guess a 1080p 3D Blu-ray was essentially a 720p image for each eye so they may not exist in a quality that holds up in a Vision Pro.

Actually, 3D Blu-ray was full HD 1080p per eye, using MVC encoding. It is actually a rather well done format, in my opinion. If it was crappy, it likely would have done better (oops, I sound bitter again.)

As typical, for 3D TV the early adopter timing was a huge issue, as the initial TVs used active shutter glasses which are expensive and a pain, then passive 3D FHD TVs came out that used interlace polarizers and theatre style polarized glasses, so you got every second line per eye and only 1920x540. By the time the format was dying, the 2016 OLED I bought had 4K, so even losing every second line it is back to full 1920x1080, you could just use the glasses you had from the theatre, and it was so much better than the first generation that they are hardly even comparable. Between the mediocre starting TVs, the lack of early available titles and, more infuriatingly, the early bundling of those rare titles (specifically Avatar which you could only get if you bought a Panasonic TV or player, and Shrek which was a Samsung exclusive), it would make a great book on how to market things poorly enough to alienate even your biggest fan.

As for iTunes, I haven't checked many as I just discovered CheapCharts yesterday. I see most Marvel movies and recent Disney available in 3D (yay!), but I noticed some early Disney (John Carter) and Fox (Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) titles I have on 3D disk don't seem to be out, yet, at least on the Canadian store. Not shocking, as Spatial video appears to be yet another different encoding format, so they would all need to be re-encoded.

I'm not sure even how to encode them, yet (though I haven't needed to, so haven't looked as hard as I usually would). I have created a few home movies on Blu-ray 3D, though, just for the heck of it, so I will be looking into what is required for AVP, so I at least have some idea when the time comes.

 

[webkit]

Giving software for free is a much easier proposition than hardware, as giving hardware away involves an additional loss per unit due to the actual cost of the physical hardware, versus duplicating software for which the development costs have already been paid. There is certainly overhead and support costs, but subsidizing hardware has all sorts of extra issues.

Yes, it is an easier proposition with software. In that reply, I was specifically responding to a post about Android.

However, in another posted I noted that selling hardware at or below cost happens too such as printers and game consoles. It can potentially be worth it if it brings people to or keeps them in an ecosystem, drives the sale of other more profitable/higher margin products or services, etc.

Selling products (including AR/VR devices) at or below cost to drive adoption, usage, etc. is not necessarily a bad idea if they have confidence in the future of that market and their products.

 

[webkit]

That "simply" is the issue. It isn't simple to do actual AR glasses.

That seems to be how Cook felt. In 2017, he had said that the technology to create a pair of augmented reality smart glasses "in a quality way" does not exist today.

 

[CBlakeston]

Actually, 3D Blu-ray was full HD 1080p per eye, using MVC encoding. It is actually a rather well done format, in my opinion. If it was crappy, it likely would have done better (oops, I sound bitter again.)

As typical, for 3D TV the early adopter timing was a huge issue, as the initial TVs used active shutter glasses which are expensive and a pain, then passive 3D FHD TVs came out that used interlace polarizers and theatre style polarized glasses, so you got every second line per eye and only 1920x540. By the time the format was dying, the 2016 OLED I bought had 4K, so even losing every second line it is back to full 1920x1080, you could just use the glasses you had from the theatre, and it was so much better than the first generation that they are hardly even comparable. Between the mediocre starting TVs, the lack of early available titles and, more infuriatingly, the early bundling of those rare titles (specifically Avatar which you could only get if you bought a Panasonic TV or player, and Shrek which was a Samsung exclusive), it would make a great book on how to market things poorly enough to alienate even your biggest fan.

As for iTunes, I haven't checked many as I just discovered CheapCharts yesterday. I see most Marvel movies and recent Disney available in 3D (yay!), but I noticed some early Disney (John Carter) and Fox (Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) titles I have on 3D disk don't seem to be out, yet, at least on the Canadian store. Not shocking, as Spatial video appears to be yet another different encoding format, so they would all need to be re-encoded.

I'm not sure even how to encode them, yet (though I haven't needed to, so haven't looked as hard as I usually would). I have created a few home movies on Blu-ray 3D, though, just for the heck of it, so I will be looking into what is required for AVP, so I at least have some idea when the time comes.

That’s cool. You would be able to watch your encodes in Moon Player I imagine.

I see the Vision Pro having three types of 3D.

3D Movies you’re used to from iTunes ect.

Apple Spatial videos which is video floating in a window but with depth you can see into with parallax giving a 6dof effect. You can shoot these on the AVP and iPhone. These are described as looking into a memory.

Apple Immersive video.
Also called VR180 if you’re coming from other headsets but Apple does it at 8K 90fps with a clarity not seen before.

So I’d imagine your movies converted to spatial wouldn’t look great as the depth crops the edges a little and that’s not good for movies lol.

But they’d lol great in moon player.

If you want to play around. You can also get spatial tool kit on your mac and use AI to encode 2D films to 3D. This can work ok and get some fun results. It’s not quite like the real thing yet but it’s only going to get Better.

Whereas if I take a 45megapixel image and use the Vision Pro to convert it from 2D to 3D, WOW. IT’s like I’m stood there taking the same image again. It’s incredible.

 

[bgillander]

Yes, it is an easier proposition with software. In that reply, I was specifically responding to a post about Android.

However, in another posted I noted that selling hardware at or below cost happens too such as printers and game consoles. It can potentially be worth it if it brings people to or keeps them in an ecosystem, drives the sale of other more profitable/higher margin products or services, etc.

Selling products (including AR/VR devices) at or below cost to drive adoption, usage, etc. is not necessarily a bad idea if they have confidence in the future of that market and their products.

Along with the usual shareholder complaints (that even Zuckerberg had to deal with), I would expect monopoly/dumping complaints at that point, honestly. I’m not saying I would agree with them, but I would expect them. Hence my “other issues” comment.

 

[bgillander]

That’s cool. You would be able to watch your encodes in Moon Player I imagine.

I see the Vision Pro having three types of 3D.

3D Movies you’re used to from iTunes ect.

Apple Spatial videos which is video floating in a window but with depth you can see into with parallax giving a 6dof effect. You can shoot these on the AVP and iPhone. These are described as looking into a memory.

Apple Immersive video.
Also called VR180 if you’re coming from other headsets but Apple does it at 8K 90fps with a clarity not seen before.

So I’d imagine your movies converted to spatial wouldn’t look great as the depth crops the edges a little and that’s not good for movies lol.

But they’d lol great in moon player.

If you want to play around. You can also get spatial tool kit on your mac and use AI to encode 2D films to 3D. This can work ok and get some fun results. It’s not quite like the real thing yet but it’s only going to get Better.

Whereas if I take a 45megapixel image and use the Vision Pro to convert it from 2D to 3D, WOW. IT’s like I’m stood there taking the same image again. It’s incredible.

The 3D footage would look very good as basic 3D, I’m sure, as it is the mapping to the half sphere of VR180 that requires the massive resolution to allow the viewport to be a reasonable resolution.

Yes, I expect I said Spatial when I meant Immersive. Sorry, I’m apparently getting too old for the remapping of terminology that Apple loves. I do have a Vuze XR, which was pretty good for its (too early) time, so I do have a little footage to experiment with, though it is only 5.6K VR180, I believe.

Thanks for the Spatial Toolkit suggestion. I expect I would have already done that in the old days, but have gotten lazy in my retirement and didn’t even go looking for it!

Edit: Yes, Moon Player and Skybox play back the flat 3D and VR180 well on the Quest, so I assume they would do so at least as well on the AVP. I have only played SBS mp4s, though, so I will have to try playing the raw MVC and Blu-ray files, as I hadn’t really thought of trying that directly.

 

[webkit]

Along with the usual shareholder complaints (that even Zuckerberg had to deal with), I would expect monopoly/dumping complaints at that point, honestly. I’m not saying I would agree with them, but I would expect them. Hence my “other issues” comment.

Whether it be hardware or software, dumping, predatory pricing, loss leader pricing, etc. can potentially become a legal issue especially when a company has a dominant position in a particular market. A software example would be Microsoft in the 1990s when they were offering IE for free at a time when competitors like Netscape were largely charging for their browsers.

 

[bgillander]

Whether it be hardware or software, dumping, predatory pricing, loss leader pricing, etc. can potentially become a legal issue especially when a company has a dominant position in a particular market. A software example would be Microsoft in the 1990s when they were offering IE for free at a time when competitors like Netscape were largely charging for their browsers.

True, but IIRC it didn’t help that they would also add their own HTML customizations and pages would then render imperfectly on the competing browsers, making even more people just give in and use IE. Charging PC vendors for a Windows licence for every computer shipped, even if a computer didn’t ship with Windows was also an issue at the time, I believe. Edit: Messing with Java was another strike against them.

Simply giving your software away is seldom the actual issue.

 

[webkit]

True, but IIRC it didn’t help that they would also add their own HTML customizations and pages would then render imperfectly on the competing browsers, making even more people just give in and use IE. Charging PC vendors for a Windows licence for every computer shipped, even if a computer didn’t ship with Windows was also an issue at the time, I believe. Edit: Messing with Java was another strike against them.

Simply giving your software away is seldom the actual issue.

There were a few different things Microsoft was accused of in 1990s. As far as browsers, the issues were tied to them giving away IE for free, bundling it with Windows, and discouraging (although not outright preventing) computer OEMs from selling or including alternative browsers with their Windows machines.

 

[bgillander]

There were a few different things Microsoft was accused of in 1990s. As far as browsers, the issues were tied to them giving away IE for free, bundling it with Windows, and discouraging (although not outright preventing) computer OEMs from selling or including alternative browsers with their Windows machines.

Yes, bundling is historically an issue, as is abuse of position.

 

[BlueParadox]

BTW, I love your avatar! I'm trying to remember where I know it from, but I keep going blank again.

Haha! Great that you know of the album. An all-time classic...

 

[BlueParadox]

So, to transfer files I just use iCloud but they are mallet 3D files I’m testing. Obvs for any mainstream media I’m streaming (2000+ iTunes movies) so streaming from a local library isn’t something I’ve looked into. Are you sure plex isn’t available? It seems like just logging into plex with the browser would work for streaming your own content?

I think I'll give Plex another go - I had an unfortunate time with it a couple of years ago, abandoned it, but have been mulling it over recently to try again...

 

[BlueParadox]

There is a lot of amazing immersive video content out there - hike in the Alps, fireworks in Hong Kong, etc. In most cases this content has to be downloaded and they take a lot of space. Explore POV is nearing 200 GB of space if you download everything. If you also download a lot of amazing apps it quickly adds up. Right now I have ~400 GB of space used.

Thanks for the response. That's given me a second thought over the AVP storage amount I will get. Perhaps the 512GB at minimum...

 

[The Game 161]

1500 would make more sense and make people be more interested

 

[HDFan]

30-40% margins are great

VP margin is no where near that given its ~$1600 component cost. If you include ~10 year development costs, store demo area configuration costs, etc. there may be no margin at all.

I'm not sure even how to encode them

I have found no easy way to enable a ripped 3D 4K Blu-Ray to play on the VP. Settled on setting up a $5 4K 3D filter in CheapCharts to be the most cost effective given the time I've wasted trying to get it to work.

 

[bgillander]

VP margin is no where near that given its ~$1600 component cost. If you include ~10 year development costs, store demo area configuration costs, etc. there may be no margin at all.

I actually doubt there is much margin even if you don't include those costs, and certainly none if you do. My comment was simply pointing out that "want" was not the issue for most potential customers in this case. And those that truly never want a headset are not potential customers ayway, so the margins are irrelevant for them.

I have found no easy way to enable a ripped 3D 4K Blu-Ray to play on the VP. Settled on setting up a $5 4K 3D filter in CheapCharts to be the most cost effective given the time I've wasted trying to get it to work.

Skybox seems to now be available on the AVP and its Quest version works very well for playing back SBS MKVs, so it might be worth a try if you already have the rips. Otherwise, yes, watching my iTunes collection in 3D is one of the main selling points for the AVP for me.

 

[bgillander]

Haha! Great that you know of the album. An all-time classic...

Yes, classic indeed, though Unfamiliar is my personal favourite of theirs.