Video: Would You Pay $2000+ for Apple's AR/VR Headset?

[Rafterman]

No.

 

[Greenmeenie]

Every single one of these people saying no, will. They're literally hanging out on macrumors.com forum section. They're as addicted/dedicated as anyone else.

Save this comment, and call me out in 5 years time if I'm wrong.

I’ve been the biggest Apple fanboy for over 20 years. I use their products professionally & personally. But I don’t automatically buy EVERYTHING they come out with. That’s silly. You can come back to me in 5yrs or 50 yrs. I don’t see myself ever buying a VR headset From Apple… or anyone.

 

[ScreenSavers]

I wouldn’t pay $99 for it. Not a product category that interests me. But if they were $2,000 you can believe they’d be sold out and back ordered for the first two months.

 

[iZac]

When you market this as a world-class 150” 4K monitor stuffed full of incredible cameras and sensors it starts to feel more viable, then add in a high end Apple Silicon processor into it. Then show users being able to use the entire App Store library for their iPhone in dismissible floating windows, it might feel more compelling.

The biggest challenge I think will be getting the pass-through cameras to mimic your real view without feeling too distorted, otherwise this could feel way too disorienting for most.

It’s like the iPhone introduction. “It’s a breakthrough internet communications device, an iPod and a phone”

Using as a screen for your Mac with pass-though cameras would be very cool. Picking up notifications and dictating replies to a little floating Memoji avatar of your friends and family could be fun too. There’s a bunch of normal use cases that can get more engaging when they’re floating in AR. Spreadsheets have never been so cool…

Once these things just look like a pair of aviators, no one will ever take them off.

So yea, I’d pay 2 grand to replace my TV and monitor, but I think I’ll wait for it to mature a bit.

Here’s an interesting thought though, what do we think Apple would prefer: To encourage 3rd party reselling to get much deeper market penetration at low prices? Or to offer a decent trade-in program for the subsequent versions to not punish early adopters?

 

[chairguru22]

LOL!! My price point is maybe $500. For $2k-$3k I can get a PS5, iPad, a laptop, AND a nice steak dinner.

 

[BugSitter]

So, Apple is smart enough to know $2k is not a consumer product. If it does release a product in this price range, it’s not for “us”.

It would be for engineers, creative pros, jobs that benefit from simulations (medical, military, aviation)… etc.

Eventually the technology will work its way down to “our” consumer price point.

They know what they are doing.

 

[dwaltwhit]

Short answer: no
Long answer: noooooooooooooo

 

[dork]

Nope.

 

[Treq]

The answer obviously depends on what the experience is going to be like. I have an oculus rift and it was excellent for playing half life Alyx but would be crap for AR applications. If it offers a solid experience in both vr and Ar and has some killer features, then sure I could see paying that, but that would be my absolute upper limit… and it would have to be ****ing fantastic…practically perfect in fact.

 

[Fodowsky]

The experience would have to rock. The Oculus 2 is pretty fun and even amazing in many ways. I'd love to know how the experience could be 6x better. If it is in both unique application AND transforms VR, I'd be in.

 

[Jensend]

I agree. The speculation or rumor is this thing will have 2X M2 processors. That sounds like some serious processing power. Then 2X 4K displays. That's going to seem like an 8K monitor with a very wide view (infinite?). LiDar, head and body tracking. That's a nice bundle. I can see how the price is going to be greater than $300.

The field of view of each eye mostly overlaps with the other eye, so you can't just multiple by 2 to get the effective resolution. If anything, you'll get less than 4K effective resolution. With VR screens, you can't see the entire width or height of the panels all at once, and you don't want to be able to, because of how pupil movement changes the position of the lenses relative to your eyes.

 

[michaelprescott]

The field of view of each eye mostly overlaps with the other eye, so you can't just multiple by 2 to get the effective resolution. If anything, you'll get less than 4K effective resolution. With VR screens, you can't see the entire width or height of the panels all at once, and you don't want to be able to, because of how pupil movement changes the position of the lenses relative to your eyes.

I agree. That wasn't well-worded. My comparison point is an Oculus Quest, which I think is no where near 4K per eye. If Apple can truly deliver 4K per eye, I'll be very impressed, and imagine any trace of screen door effects will be gone. It'll be a huge step up in quality compared to the Vive or the Quest. If they can get this to run well and cool (temperature), I can see it becoming an important tool in a number of professions even before it becomes a mainstream gaming/entertainment/communication solution. I'd love to have a tolerable high resolution "infinite" workspace. Check out Sony's demo of 4K per eye gear,

 

[ian87w]

$2000 for gen 1, makes sense. Then gen 2 will be better and cheaper. Gen 1 is to attract early adopters so they can subsidize the R&D cost.

I still personally think that this AR/VR stuff is not going anywhere, let alone at that kind of prices. I mean what’s the use case other than some niche gaming stuff? Even then (gaming), we had had the Wii and Xbox Kinect, and they went nowhere, sticking to traditional gamepad gameplay.

 

[Bobcat32]

I mean we all expect Apple when Apple does something that it is done RIGHT the first time and not the second. Since AR VR market hasn’t really taken off really even in this day age yet aka mass appeal; is because it hasn’t been done RIGHT yet. If Apple indeed does this right and I’m sure fingers crossed they will and show us an experience/product we never knew we wanted and is actually useful cool etc then maybe that price tag will actually mean something. And even if so we all know they will release an iphone XR equivalent headset that’s cheaper after gen 1 or 2 anyways if it succeeds. They need to price high on this OG product initially anyways as they are effectively pricing the market with their hoped unfounded success if this succeeds. They are a “luxury“ company in all? Frankly if they are going to be implementing a 3000 ppi display into this thing as a VR/AR experience supposedly needs to be done right. In itself would be groundbreaking and actually shows they are serious. As I don’t see any of the completion doing anything close to that… So even though I don’t have the money but if I did Id say price is just too step no matter how good :/

 

[JosephAW]

Just skip this iteration and go to the regular glasses version with augmented reality.

 

[bushman4]

I'll reserve judgement till I see what it can do $2000 sounds high for a first version but lets wait and see

 

[44267547]

LOL!! My price point is maybe $500. For $2k-$3k I can get a PS5, iPad, a laptop, AND a nice steak dinner.

Well, no you can’t. Because PS5’s are basically unobtainable at retail MSRP, unless you’re paying scalping prices, they’re considerably over ~$500.

And I have no idea what laptop you’re referring to, but a well Spec’d laptop is probably nearing you close to ~$1200, unless of course, you just want some type of cheap Chromebook.

 

[duffman9000]

Yes. But with a lot of conditions applied.

It better have 4K micro LED screens and the required hardware to do 120Hz or higher.
It better be light weight and comfortable for hours.

Im guessing that it will be an untethered device. The HTC VIVE Wi-Fi attachment is crap and I doubt Apple would try to make up their own Wi-Fi standard.

 

[duffman9000]

Guess I'll be the exception. Do I want to pay $2000? No. Do I want to pay $100? No. $10? No. However, a better question is will you pay $2000 for a VR system with x, y, z features and x, y, z capabilities, processing power, etc? Probably. But I need to know what those features are, what the capabilities are to ascertain if it is worth it to me.

They're talking about possibly 2X M2 processors in it (that alone is amazing if true)? Two 4K displays with illusionary 8K equivalence (how much do large 4K monitors cost)? A dozen cameras? Multiple LiDars? An OS and wares refined for developing AR and VR apps? If I can have all of that in one device with the refined simplicity and compliment to their entire ecosystem that Apple loves to deliver, yeah, I'll buy it, and I'll build for it.

I see a whole new market place opening up and endless possibilities, new tools, new ways of working, producing, creating, art, communication, gaming... we have an Oculus Quest, and update after update in software alone, it just keeps getting better, it's awesome, but I don't like Facebook or Meta. Plus, I imagine Apple will leap far past anything that Facebook is producing. So, for gaming, VR is absolutely the future. Meta knows it, Sony knows it, Unity and Epic know it, and Apple knows it. Whoever can deliver the hardware and software for it is going to win the gaming community and a LOT more.

Imagination isn't the limitation right now. If they can deliver all of that in a single device, it's going to be amazing. And that is indeed a concern. With the Oculus, while the games and apps keep getting better, the constraints are weight, size, and performance. It gets too warm to wear for long, like would be necessary to use for productivity. It also has very slight lag, imperceptible, but just enough to make your eyes and brain weary. If Apple can address the size, performance, resolution, and temperature issues, with all of that hardware in place, they'll have a winner. The world will just need to catch up with the imagination and vision.

The hardware is the limitation right now. There are already a lot of good ideas that are held back by current hardware.
Not all games have to be in VR. imagine playing a game or watching a movie on a gigantic virtual screen. Too bad the quality is currently akin to 240p resolution.

 

[JOLoughlin]

This rendering (which started from The Information) needs to die. If it was true it was likely a prototype and not final product. The front has no room for the nose and a single band like that made out of fluoroelastomer or liquid silicone rubber like the Apple Watch bands for a head strap??!! Maybe if people were completely bald this might work? Barely any room for compute or battery I just highly doubt this.

 

[JavaScript Jackal]

If the device allows for me to uses prescription lenses (my eyes suck), I’ll seriously consider paying up to 3k.

Trying to learn Swift development and a little graphic design this year. Want to be in position to potentially develop an app on the system. Know I’m probably biting off more than I can chew.

 

[EdT]

I might be the first person on the list here to say yes....but I can't. No, I would not spend that much. I would want a pair but cant justify that when I look down my wish list.

The tech in me will probably want one, but I can’t think of any AR application that I’ve ever seen that I thought was more than a gimmick, and not one that would hold my interest anywhere near long enough to justify the price of the glasses, let alone what both the glasses and the AR software would cost. And bluntly Apple tends to pick safe but extremely bland content for devices. Could you imagine them allowing an AR/VR like GTA 5 or Red Dead Redemption on any service they control? I can’t.

 

[MacLC]

$2K would be $1.5K less than MS’ Holo Lens AR device. Not sure why people (not you) are acting like AR pricing is about to hit sub-$1K levels when it has yet to hit sub-$3K levels.

This!

I use a HoloLens2 at work. Altogether it cost close to $4000.
If Apple's device operates like VR a la Oculus, then $2000 way too expensive.
If Apple's device operates like a HoloLens, then it's a steal.

 

[jecowa]

This!

I use a HoloLens2 at work. Altogether it cost close to $4000.
If Apple's device operates like VR a la Oculus, then $2000 way too expensive.
If Apple's device operates like a HoloLens, then it's a steal.

What makes Microsoft's HoloLens so much better than the Oculus Rift? Just the video camera?

 

[jecowa]

I've been thinking that this was the intent of AirPods Max (and Spacial Audio) all along: as a partner device/feature to support Apple VR. I think they were just ready ahead of the headset.

I mean, why not release AirPods Max early, recoup R&D spend with early adopter dollars, easily weather the sea of online gripes about price, then drop the headset and talk about how the pair offer the "ultimate, Pro Max+ experience." Especially with the v2 AirPods Max - which the v1 adopters will also gobble up - but so too will some of the headset purchasers. This is why I think we will see pricing closing in on $2k - sell headphones and headset as a package. Which would make @UltimateSyn's $1,500 number for the headset, start to "make sense." Or is it cents?

I really hope they don't do something as Apple as to pair laggy Bluetooth audio with a 2k$ headset.