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Apple just need to make a lighter and FAR more affordable AVP 3, AVA, AV (or whatever they want to call it) if they expect most consumers to even consider placing an order.. I’m losing interest in tech.
Most consumers have never used any Apple device. Apple does better in some countries than others, but worldwide, every year, Apple expects more Android devices to be purchased than iPhones. They also expect more Windows devices to be purchased than Macs or iPads. They don’t make their money by making things “most” consumers want to buy (or can even afford). They make things affluent consumers want to buy. Which is why, even though they are outsold by units in most markets they compete in, they still draw in enough dollars to continue to make the effort profitable.
 
Such a hilariously failed product. It was the first time apple's marketing dept literally thought everybody was a tech worker making 500k/year just like them and could totally afford a 3499 headset toy
Ohhhh, you weren’t around for the Cube Mac, huh? :) For anyone paying even tangential attention to Apple, this is hardly the first time Apple’s marketing thought their customers were affluent.
 
Besides being prohibitively expensive, Vision Pro can't be used "out of the box" by the 48% of the population that wears prescription eyeglasses. I think that is its biggest fail.
48% of 8 billion people is enough to sell 100 million Apple Vision Pro’s a year for 80 years. The biggest fail is that their potential market is enormously large? Apple sells FAR fewer Macs than that in a year and it’s a profitable business for them.
 
Such a hilariously failed product. It was the first time apple's marketing dept literally thought everybody was a tech worker making 500k/year just like them and could totally afford a 3499 headset toy
The first VHS VCRs in the late 1970s from JVC cost $1,000++

This is more than $3,499 in inflation-adjusted 2025 dollars.
 
I would have rather had Apple abandon the Vision Pro and continued working on an Apple Car. Xiaomi just came out with an electric car that blows away anything Tesla has come out with and for less $$. It truly is a smartphone with wheels. I think if Steve was still alive & Johnny Ive still worked for Apple, they’d have come up with the most amazing EV imaginable. It could have been the best EV on the market. And a real hit. Much more so than the Vision Pro which will always be a niche product. Hopefully Apple will return to developing an EV again in the future. Perhaps when solid state batteries with a 500-1,000 mile range and 15 minute charge time are a reality. ⚡️ 🚗 ⚡️
Apple not going back to the car... sticking with the Vision Pro because it's a stronger way to lock people into their entertainment/sports ecosystem - AppleTV.
 
The first VHS VCRs in the late 1970s from JVC cost $1,000++

This is around $3,499 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Yep, The Vision Pro is about the same price as a maxed out MacBook Pro or a nice Apple Studio + Apple Studio Display setup (once extras and upgrades are factored in).

The problem with the Vision Pro is not necessarily the price, it's the limited use-cases and lack of software/apps/content.

I can fully understand that people who bought them and who have use cases for it are very happy with their purchase.

But it won't sell huge numbers unless it can convince a lot of people that it offers significantly more that what laptops, desktops and big screen TVs can offer.

The most common comment I hear about the Vision Pro is not that people think it's ridiculous, it's that it looks like a lovely piece of design and engineering, but that the many people who admire it won't buy it, because they don't have enough use for it.
 
Yep, The Vision Pro is about the same price as a maxed out MacBook Pro or a nice Apple Studio + Apple Studio Display setup (once extras and upgrades are factored in).

The problem with the Vision Pro is not necessarily the price, it's the limited use-cases and lack of software/apps/content.

I can fully understand that people who bought them and who have use cases for it are very happy with their purchase.

But it won't sell huge numbers unless it can convince a lot of people that it offers significantly more that what laptops, desktops and big screen TVs can offer.

The most common comment I hear about the Vision Pro is not that people think it's ridiculous, it's that it looks like a lovely piece of design and engineering, but that the many people who admire it won't buy it, because they don't have enough use for it.
Same with a VCR in 1977. The things you use(d) it for are very, very good. But that doesn't mean it's something you're going to use every day of the week.
 
Same with a VCR in 1977. The things you use(d) it for are very, very good. But that doesn't mean it's something you're going to use every day of the week.
Stretching the analogy, VCRs became far more popular in he 80s, and not only because the price came down (I'd say the price came down because the became popular, not that they became popular because the price went down) : they became far more popular once the amount of content ( with VCRs, movies and whole TV series ) reached critical mass and video libraries and video stores became commonplace. The use cases for the VCR became mainstream, and so they became as standard a household item as a TV.

Headsets are not at that point yet. They're at the stage where the VCR was at when they were only being bought by enthusiasts and/or (semi-)professionals.

The Vision Pro (and all VR / AR headsets) is currently more like laserdisc than VCR. laserdisc was great, laserdisc collectors loved them, but it was a niche market. Vision might become a VCR in the future, but it's not there yet. There needs to be more mainstream content and mainstream use-cases.

I can't remember who said it or wrote it, but a great comment relatively recently was that we'll know when headsets have hit the mainstream when airline companies have headsets for passenger use on long-haul flights as standard.
 
Ohhhh, you weren’t around for the Cube Mac, huh? :) For anyone paying even tangential attention to Apple, this is hardly the first time Apple’s marketing thought their customers were affluent.

Affluent =/= Buy Everything.

Wife and are affluent, but were also frugal...but even if we weren't, I still wouldn't buy an VP; I'm more interested in the salad I'm currently eating. AVP = boring.
 
Most consumers have never used any Apple device. Apple does better in some countries than others, but worldwide, every year, Apple expects more Android devices to be purchased than iPhones. They also expect more Windows devices to be purchased than Macs or iPads. They don’t make their money by making things “most” consumers want to buy (or can even afford). They make things affluent consumers want to buy. Which is why, even though they are outsold by units in most markets they compete in, they still draw in enough dollars to continue to make the effort profitable.
Great that people in the global south etc can get an iPhone, MBA, etc and great for Apple’s bottom line. On the other side I don’t think they understand affluent consumer marketing which has been around for longer than the couple of geeks who created Apple in a garage. A computing device, no matter how it is flashed up, is a limited lifespan device and not a luxury automatic Swiss watch. A lot of ‘affluent’ people get that way by working hard and being careful with money. I could afford an AVP (and have the Swiss watch, etc) but I’m not even interested in throwing away money on tech that’s promising but overpriced and not sufficiently developed.
 
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Is that your vision? That’s certainly not how Tim tried to sell it to the world when first announced. He sold it as the next big gadget for the everyday consumer. Go back and watch all the interviews he did. When he realised it was a failure and not selling, the comms suddenly changed from Apple.
I did say elsewhere here that they messed up the marketing. I do agree that was a cock up and the later revisions by Cook are what should have been the line from the start.
 
Ohhhh, you weren’t around for the Cube Mac, huh? :) For anyone paying even tangential attention to Apple, this is hardly the first time Apple’s marketing thought their customers were affluent.
And yet the G4 cube led to the studio, which *is* successful. The end result of the NeXT Cube (and other similar workstations from companies that, unlike NeXT, didnt take over Apple, like the SGI Octanes/O2s) —> G4 Cube —> 2013 Mac Pro —> Studio. They had to try a whole bunch to get the concept right for Apple. Suspect the same will happen here
 
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And yet the G4 cube led to the studio, which *is* successful. The end result of the NeXT Cube (and other similar workstations from companies that, u like NeXT, didnt take over Apple, like the SGI Octanes/O2s) —> G4 Cube —> 2013 Mac Pro —> Studio. They had to try a whole bunch to get the concept right for Apple. Suspect the same will happen here
Yep, that's how iterative development and "innovation" really works. It's how almost everything works. Any engineer, designer, musician, artist, chef etc. who claims the idea came to them in a dream and they outputted perfection as soon as they woke up is just lying. Everything takes work and revision. As Beckett said, "Try again, fail again, fail better."
 
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Apple not going back to the car... sticking with the Vision Pro because it's a stronger way to lock people into their entertainment/sports ecosystem - AppleTV.
They may not go back to the apple car, but by all accounts, the Vision Pro isn't selling well at all, so i wouldnt be surprised if they discontinue it.
 
I'd imagine they dropped the car because they realized that they couldn't compete, and releasing a "less than ideal" EVrwould be far more damaging than not releasing any Apple Car at all.

They haven't been the "David" (David and Goliath) in the tech world for a very long time. They would be the "David" in the car world. Chinese companies are overtaking Tesla at this point, and Apple would have been starting far behind Tesla.

A car isn't just a "smartphone on wheels" - the actual car part, the vehicle itself, is not something Apple had experience with, so they would have had to lock in a solid, long-term co-operation deal with a partner who already knew what they were doing when designing and building a car. They didn't, and probably couldn't. Cars have to be safe and roadworthy. Apple would be great at interfaces and extra comfort features in the car but, realistically, if your Mac or iPhone fails or malfunctions due to a design quirk, it won't kill you. An over-engineered, "too smart for its own good" car might well kill you or someone else on the road, if it were to malfunction. And Apple loves to over-engineer products, often just for the sake of over-engineering them.

In an ideal world, an Apple car would be "it just works" and a game-changer for (luxury) car design. But the opposite might have happened - if the Apple Car had ended up like the Tesla Cybertruck (over-engineered but badly implemented - because of "steer-by-wire", it cannot even be legally driven in many countries), it would have been a disaster for Apple on a completely different scale than the negative mutterings about the less than impressive sales and consumer reaction to the Vision Pro, Apple Intelligence or the iPhone Air.

As it is, what we know about the whole "Titan" car project is that they were working on a "whole car" OS - which can be see in CarPlay Ultra, and I think a lot of the sensors, cameras and environmental processing / situational awareness in the Vision Pro quite probably came from the "Titan" R&D. But they had very little development of the actual "car" component of the car.
If the chinese smartphone company xaomi can make a successful electric car, i am sure apple could as well. Phones have kind of plateaued. The vision pro isn't selling well. Who knows, apple could enter the ev market again down the road. My bet is when solid state batteries become a reality.
 
If the chinese smartphone company xaomi can make a successful electric car, i am sure apple could as well. Phones have kind of plateaued. The vision pro isn't selling well. Who knows, apple could enter the ev market again down the road. My bet is when solid state batteries become a reality.
Xiaomi basically bought an existing Chinese car company. More accurately, they hired the majority of staff of an existing car company to work for them and bring the skills and IP with them. It cost Xiaomi billions. To compete, Apple would need to hire thousands of Ford or GM staff to do the same, and would have to play nice with the relevant motor industry unions, and have a government and judiciary that doesn’t care about respecting IP. That’s something that isn’t an issue in China but might be in the US.

Chinese industry is also inseperable from the Chinese government, and the Chinese government wanted an EV industry, so Xiaomi, as well as other EV companies, was massively funded by the government until they were producing and revenue generating.

How industries develop in China is completely different to how industries develop in the western world. What worked for Xiaomi would not work for Apple or Tesla, which is why Chinese EV companies have advanced far more quickly than Tesla and are overtaking Tesla.

The only US industry remotely similiar to Chinese industries is the US defense industry, in terms of government subsidies and unconditional support.
 
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