Vision Pro With M5 Chip Rumored for 2025, Apple Also 'Considering' iPhone-Connected Glasses

[vantelimus]

Think about it this way: a month after Vision Pro hits the markets and floods Apple's servers with user data they shutter the alleged car project. Coincidence?

Yes, it is an accidental coincidence.

The more likely reason was the coming increase in import tariffs on Chinese-made EVs. In November 2023, the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party urged the Office of the United States Trade Representative to hike tariffs on Chinese-made vehicles. By December 2023, it was being reported that the Biden administration was considering increasing the tariffs from 25% to 100%. Biden announced a tariff increase to 100% in May 2024.

Increasing the tariff from 25% to 100% increases the landed cost of the Apple car by 60%, which in turn would have increased the sticker price by 60%. I suspect the impact of that would be quite a bit more significant to Project Titan than any unrelated data received from AVP sensors.

The timing of the cancellation lines up well with the institution of the tariffs. Shutting down a project as large as Titan would have required BOD discussion and approval. Given that Apple's shareholder meeting was on February 28, 2024, it is reasonable to assume that there was a BOD meeting sometime in January or early February. Surely Apple's Board of Directors is well connected enough to know by January 2024 that the tariff was going to be raised. Board members would have already been briefed by the time of the meeting about the coming tariffs and the impact on financial projections.

Project Titan was shut down on February 27 2024.

 

[jo-1]

Yes, it is an accidental coincidence.

The more likely reason was the coming increase in import tariffs on Chinese-made EVs. In November 2023, the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party urged the Office of the United States Trade Representative to hike tariffs on Chinese-made vehicles. By December 2023, it was being reported that the Biden administration was considering increasing the tariffs from 25% to 100%. Biden announced a tariff increase to 100% in May 2024.

Increasing the tariff from 25% to 100% increases the landed cost of the Apple car by 60%, which in turn would have increased the sticker price by 60%. I suspect the impact of that would be quite a bit more significant to Project Titan than any unrelated data received from AVP sensors.

The timing of the cancellation lines up well with the institution of the tariffs. Shutting down a project as large as Titan would have required BOD discussion and approval. Given that Apple's shareholder meeting was on February 28, 2024, it is reasonable to assume that there was a BOD meeting sometime in January or early February. Surely Apple's Board of Directors is well connected enough to know by January 2024 that the tariff was going to be raised. Board members would have already been briefed by the time of the meeting about the coming tariffs and the impact on financial projections.

Project Titan was shut down on February 27 2024.

sounds completely realistic and is probably the reason - well summarized

 

[Heat_Fan89]

That is NOT what Apple is doing.

The AVP is an early-adopter product for a nascent market that Apple is attempting to establish.

To grasp Apple’s strategy, it’s necessary to shift your perspective from one comparing the AVP by conventional consumer electronics standards to the process of creating new markets through innovative technology. This isn’t a magical endeavor; it’s not about throwing things against a wall and hoping for a miracle, even though that’s a fair description of how startups often operate. It is fraught with more avenues to failure than to success, one of the biggest being trying to move the technology into a mass market before it is ready. But that is not what Apple is doing and Tim Cook has said as much.

The AVP is at the same place that the Apple II was in 1977. There was no PC market. The Apple II was for hobbyists and far-sighted professionals. There was too little software available to establish a consumer market, and the tools for creating software were crude and unreliable. It cost $1300, the equivalent of about $6750 in today's dollars. Yet, the early adopters saw the potential. They bought it despite the cost and limitations. They created their own software, which in turn sparked a cascade of software development that ultimately led to the creation of the PC market.

It is easy to criticize the AVP when judging against a mass-market consumer item like the iPhone. All it takes is a lack of circumspection and sticking to the wrong frame of reference. Ken Olsen, founder and CEO of minicomputer manufacturer Digital Equipment Corporation, once famously said in 1977, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” DEC missed the PC market because Olsen lacked the vision of Apple and the early adopters. He was locked into an established frame of reference that placed computers solely as big pieces of machinery for business and industry.

Of course, the AVP could fail to cross the chasm into a mainstream market. Trying to sell it to mainstream consumers in its current form would certainly do that. But, as I and Tim Cook have said, that's not what Apple is doing.

Oh come on, seriously. It's like the AVP was designed in search of a solution. If this thing really was the next BIG thing which it isn't and it won't be, there would be no need to halt or scale back production. But i'm glad you are happy with your AVP.

 

[acgmph]

Without support for enterprise enrollment with Microsoft apps I cannot fully use mine. I am still tethered to a Mac whenever I travel, which is not ideal.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

We’ve got over a dozen at work that anyone on the dev team can check out for weeks at a time. No one does anymore because it’s a movie watching consumption device. Even the folks using it with Macs don’t find utility in its escape hatch functionality as an external display for a variety of reasons. We all think eyesight is dumb and ill-conceived when an LED on the front would have worked as well. If you have to fall back to the Mac for it to be useful Apple has lost

Sorry for my laughing emoji but some seem to think this product is the next BIG thing and eventually given time it will take off. It won't, VR is niche and will continue to be. I would never consider buying goggles that I have to wear for a certain experience but then again i'm not the type to talk to my phone with Hey Siri or OK Google commands.

The AVP still looks to me like something you would wear when going snorkeling. The only thing missing from the AVP mask is a breather hose you insert in your mouth.

 

[Serqetry]

I haven't tried AVP myself, but from many reviews I take that the "video" is incredibly crispy. You think it isn't that great?

There are 2 kinds of reviewers... the ones that have good vision and say it's unacceptable for using virtual monitors long term, and the ones that are half blind that can't tell the difference between a real monitor and the virtual monitors. Plenty of people on Youtube that can actually see are honest about how the AVP resolution just isn't what other people claim when using it for virtual monitors. If I recall, Snazzy Labs talked about this in detail in one of his review videos. People are just lying about the "4K" virtual monitors. They're only "4K" because that's what MacOS sees them as.

It only takes a bit of critical thinking to realize that a 4K image scaled and rotated to appear as a virtual monitor on an actual 4K display is going to be very low detail compared to an actual 4K monitor. If you can't figure this out in your head, then I suggest going into a program like Gimp or Photoshop and taking a 4K screenshot with lots of small text (terminal, Xcode, whatever) and then shrinking and skewing it to simulate how it would look on a AVP's displays in front of your eyes.

Claiming that the AVP virtual monitors are 4K on a 4K display is ridiculous, like perpetual motion machines or some other crazy thing that just can't exist in reality. The displays would have to be much, much higher resolution to have 4K of pixel detail displayed on a virtual monitor.

 

[turbineseaplane]

iPhone connected glasses will be the one that will be widely adopted by consumers if priced correctly.

Exactly right
That should’ve been the first release honestly.

Depending on the price I would’ve been interested in that myself

 

[jo-1]

Oh come on, seriously.

strange kind of language on a serious discussion

It's like the AVP was designed in search of a solution.

I don't get your point? What is a SmartPhone designed for?
Right - the beauty of any real Smartphone is that it is not designed for any specific task and with ( anti ) social media we see a use case that never existed before and yet SmartPhones fill that purpose perfect.
You design any advanced gear as open as possible.

If this thing really was the next BIG thing which it isn't and it won't be,

How would you know? I would be willing to bet ¢ 1000 that MR will be a big thing in 6 .. 8 years from now - we ain't seen nothing yet on this type of user interface - there will be tons of applications where it suits - not at this price point and limitations though.

there would be no need to halt or scale back production.

The OLED micro displays are super pricy and production is limited to a few 100 k globally - this has always been the interpretation - 500 .. 600 k is the global maximum Apple can sell of this device - this is already a very very good number and in two to three years from now technology will have moved on and make a smaller and better device possible with a much smaller battery and probably new advanced image technology.
All interested developers and early adopters have had their chance to geht their hands on. This is not a mass market device

But i'm glad you are happy with your AVP.

Why would anyone ague against that?

 

[vantelimus]

Oh come on, seriously. It's like the AVP was designed in search of a solution. If this thing really was the next BIG thing which it isn't and it won't be, there would be no need to halt or scale back production. But i'm glad you are happy with your AVP.

You really should read a book on technology innovation. I recommend you start with Moore's classic Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers. It has been around almost 35 years now and is still the foundation for understanding technology adoption.

Early adopter products are exactly technologies in search of a problem to solve. They are pieces of technology which provide a capability. There are two phases of early adoption:

1. Innovators: These are first users who are willing to take risks to try new technology. Note: technology, not solution. They are tolerant of bugs and incomplete features.

2. Early Adopters: This group follows innovators but is slightly more risk-averse. They adopt technologies which innovators have shown have practical value and market potential. They use the technology to fashion their own solutions (as opposed to mainstream users who buy off-the-shelf solutions).

The AVP fits both these phases of early adoption depending on the user who buys it. No one who understands this process and understands what Apple is doing expects the AVP in its current format to be a mainstream product.

As for halting or scaling back production, they have not. Before (or close to simultaneously with) the release of the product, Macrumors was reporting that production levels for 2024 were being set at 400,000 due to limitations in Sony supplying screens. Since that time, Macrumors has published many different rumors about production, the most recent being that Apple has scaled back production to 500,000 units due to slow sales.

It is pretty funny to see people claiming slow sales and scaling back production every other week citing numbers that are higher than the initial production-run numbers for 2024.

 

[doelcm82]

There are 2 kinds of reviewers... the ones that have good vision and say it's unacceptable for using virtual monitors long term, and the ones that are half blind that can't tell the difference between a real monitor and the virtual monitors. Plenty of people on Youtube that can actually see are honest about how the AVP resolution just isn't what other people claim when using it for virtual monitors. If I recall, Snazzy Labs talked about this in detail in one of his review videos. People are just lying about the "4K" virtual monitors. They're only "4K" because that's what MacOS sees them as.

It only takes a bit of critical thinking to realize that a 4K image scaled and rotated to appear as a virtual monitor on an actual 4K display is going to be very low detail compared to an actual 4K monitor. If you can't figure this out in your head, then I suggest going into a program like Gimp or Photoshop and taking a 4K screenshot with lots of small text (terminal, Xcode, whatever) and then shrinking and skewing it to simulate how it would look on a AVP's displays in front of your eyes.

Claiming that the AVP virtual monitors are 4K on a 4K display is ridiculous, like perpetual motion machines or some other crazy thing that just can't exist in reality. The displays would have to be much, much higher resolution to have 4K of pixel detail displayed on a virtual monitor.

If you have good vision, and you have a 4K television on the your living room wall that you watch from 20 feet away in the kitchen, you're NOT getting 4K going into your eyes. It may as well be 720p. You couldn't tell the difference.

If you get 2 inches away from the monitor, you're still not getting 4K, because only the small part you're focusing on is being processed in high resolution by your brain.

You never really get to appreciate 4K, because even with good eyesight, your eyes aren't that good.

That's not to say 4K isn't important in a TV or computer screen. The image really is sharp, and to see the sharpness of any part of the screen, all you have to do is point your eyes to that part of the screen and focus your eyes.

With Vision Pro, the OS is tracking your eyes and rendering that part of the display as sharp as it can. A safari window on the AVP looks very sharp. Movies look very sharp. Even text displayed in movies looks sharp.

The virtual monitor is not as sharp as a Safari window. If Apple can figure out how to render the Virtual monitor the way they render a safari window, it won't really matter that' it's not technically 4K. If you move the virtual monitor so that it's virtually 20 feet away, it certainly won't have 4K pixels being rendered, but it will be as useful as a real 4K monitor would be at that distance. When you move it 2 inches from your eyes virtually, it will use MORE pixels than a real 4K monitor, for the part you can see.

What matters is how sharp the image appears to you. In VisionOS 1, the virtual display is not as crisp as real life, and not as crisp as I would like. VisionOS 2 promises both a bigger virtual display, and better rendering. That part of VisionOS 2 hasn't been released, yet, so I'll wait and see.

 

[doelcm82]

1. Innovators: These are first users who are willing to take risks to try new technology. Note: technology, not solution. They are tolerant of bugs and incomplete features.

2. Early Adopters: This group follows innovators but is slightly more risk-averse. They adopt technologies which innovators have shown have practical value and market potential. They use the technology to fashion their own solutions (as opposed to mainstream users who buy off-the-shelf solutions).

Innovators learn Assembler, or just write machine code themselves. Early adopters learn BASIC. I'm definitely more of an early adopter than an innovator. I learned assembler in school, but never felt tempted to build any project with it.

I agree that the Vision Pro is for both these groups. There are a lot of things it's capable of if you're willing to write the code yourself!

But there are also a lot of things it's capable of without much effort at all. I want to view the pictures I take with my iPhone in 3D. With Vision Pro, all I have to do to view photos in 3D is open up the photos app and then open the picture from the image browser. If it took it in 3D, then it's in 3D. If I didn't take it in 3D, there's an icon I can select and the program automatically converts it to 3D. The conversion is very good in most cases. That functionality is already there. I don't have to innovate. I just had to early adopt.

 

[vantelimus]

There are 2 kinds of reviewers... the ones that have good vision and say it's unacceptable for using virtual monitors long term, and the ones that are half blind that can't tell the difference between a real monitor and the virtual monitors. Plenty of people on Youtube that can actually see are honest about how the AVP resolution just isn't what other people claim when using it for virtual monitors. If I recall, Snazzy Labs talked about this in detail in one of his review videos. People are just lying about the "4K" virtual monitors. They're only "4K" because that's what MacOS sees them as.

It only takes a bit of critical thinking to realize that a 4K image scaled and rotated to appear as a virtual monitor on an actual 4K display is going to be very low detail compared to an actual 4K monitor. If you can't figure this out in your head, then I suggest going into a program like Gimp or Photoshop and taking a 4K screenshot with lots of small text (terminal, Xcode, whatever) and then shrinking and skewing it to simulate how it would look on a AVP's displays in front of your eyes.

Claiming that the AVP virtual monitors are 4K on a 4K display is ridiculous, like perpetual motion machines or some other crazy thing that just can't exist in reality. The displays would have to be much, much higher resolution to have 4K of pixel detail displayed on a virtual monitor.

I don't know who is lying to you about their experience with the AVP. If someone doesn't understand some relatively trivial detail about pixels per inch or pixels per degree, that doesn't diminish their subjective assessment of the AVP as a monitor. Engineers and pedants like to talk about speeds and feeds and draw tiny distinctions between good and bad based on it. The majority of users only know what works for them. If they find the AVP a better display for whatever reason, then the AVP is better for them, numbers be damned.

Your point about resolutions may be appropriate for people doing high quality photographic or video work, but even there, I suspect people magnify their images when they need to work with pixel-level detail.

About the AVP being unacceptable for using virtual monitors long term: define unacceptable. I suspect you only have a personally subjective definition for that. So, it should be okay if people have a subjective view of whether their AVP is a better monitor for themselves.

You know, come to think of it, I used sub-4k monitors for close to 40 years before they became widely available at a reasonable prices (around 2014). I don't think I got a 4k monitor until about 2020 to use as a third monitor on my machine. Was I forced to use unacceptable monitors all those years? Should I sue Apple over the display that was on my SE in the 80s? It was only 512×342 pixels, a 0.175k display! What an outrage!

Forget about me, according to statcounter (https://gs.statcounter.com/screen-resolution-stats/desktop/worldwide), about 65% of computer desktop users still have sub-4k monitors. Are those monitors unacceptable for long term use too? It seems for those people, the AVP provides a higher resolution display (one can set the resolution of the virtual display independently from the physical display attached to the Mac). Of the people who do have 4k monitors, not all use them in full resolution because they don't want to slump forward to within a couple inches of their screen to squint at small text. For those, most would find the AVP a better solution for viewing text than their physical monitor.

 

[Serqetry]

In VisionOS 1, the virtual display is not as crisp as real life, and not as crisp as I would like.

At least you're admitting this... which is more than I can say for most AVP owners it seems.

I just don't understand this fad of VR virtual displays replacing monitors and TVs. "It's like a big monitor right in front of me!". You know what else can do that? A big monitor, placed in front of you. Except you don't have to wear heavy ski goggles and it's actually as sharp as real life.

 

[Serqetry]

about 65% of computer desktop users still have sub-4k monitors. Are those monitors unacceptable for long term use too?

Yes. I am not in that 65% because 4K is the bare minimum I want to be looking at on a computer monitor these days. Things have changed dramatically with the way fonts are rendered. Before people ditched bitmap fonts, 640x480 was good enough... but now monitors have to be very high res in order for them to not lookl like anti-aliased garbage.

You can still see individual pixels on 4K monitors... which is why Apple doesn't like them and chooses to make their monitors 5K or 6K depending on the size. 4K isn't "retina".

If you're cheaping out on monitors and running 2K or less still, maybe a $3500 VR headset that displays blurry sub-4K virtual monitors will be good enough for you... but I think buying a nice real monitor is a better use of your money.

 

[vantelimus]

If you're cheaping out on monitors and running 2K or less still, maybe a $3500 VR headset that displays blurry sub-4K virtual monitors will be good enough for you... but I think buying a nice real monitor is a better use of your money.

I don't think people are cheaping out. I think people have what they have. They don't upgrade until a monitor dies. Besides, most people don't need computers. Tablets and phones have replaced them.

Whether a nice monitor would be a better use of my money is a subjective value judgment. My wife has poor eye sight so she has a Dell 4k and an Apple 5k. It makes good sense for her to have a good monitor. My eyesight is fine. As gorgeous as the Pro XDRs are, I'd rather have an AVP because I can sit in my backyard with my MacBook and have a nice large display.

 

[Serqetry]

Besides, most people don't need computers. Tablets and phones have replaced them.

If a tablet or phone is all they have, then I don't care what they think about the AVP virtual displays... they're not the kind of users that would recognize unacceptable clarity in small text like is used for coding.

 

[vantelimus]

If a tablet or phone is all they have, then I don't care what they think about the AVP virtual displays... they're not the kind of users that would recognize unacceptable clarity in small text like is used for coding.

I've been coding for 50 years. Small text is not required for coding. I call BS.

Every modern IDE will let you control the font size that your code is displayed in. Use that feature and format your code correctly for readability. If you need a super crisp display because you cram so much on a single line that you require a 7pt font on a 4k display at maximum resolution to see a full line of code, that's on you for poor coding practices.

 

[Serqetry]

I've been coding for 50 years. Small text is not required for coding. I call BS.

Every modern IDE will let you control the font size that your code is displayed in. Use that feature and format your code correctly for readability. If you need a super crisp display because you cram so much on a single line that you require a 7pt font on a 4k display at maximum resolution to see a full line of code, that's on you for poor coding practices.

Lol... ok. Good job intentionally misrepresenting everything I said. I never said anything about 7 point fonts.

The fact is, the AVP is not able to display sharp text because 4K is actually very low resolution when it is making up your entire field of vision. The only reason you don't see big pixels on the AVP is because it's blurred. Someday virtual monitors in an XR headset could be good enough to replace real monitors... when we have tiny OLED screens that are higher than 8K resolution.

I'm tired of arguing with people here who are either half blind or just in complete denial. So I'll leave this here in case anyone actually cares to learn why virtual monitors just don't work: Apple Vision Pro (Part 5A) – Why Monitor Replacement is Ridiculous

 

[doelcm82]

At least you're admitting this... which is more than I can say for most AVP owners it seems.

I just don't understand this fad of VR virtual displays replacing monitors and TVs. "It's like a big monitor right in front of me!". You know what else can do that? A big monitor, placed in front of you. Except you don't have to wear heavy ski goggles and it's actually as sharp as real life.

The point I was making is that the virtual display is not as sharp as it could be. If it were as sharp as the Vision OS Safari window next to it, it would be much more usable. And Apple has promised a sharper (and higher resolution) virtual display in an update that should arrive this year. So I'm waiting and seeing.

Virtual displays replacing monitors and TVs is not a "fad". But when I use my AVP to watch a movie, I do it on a screen that is bigger than my 75" TV screen, and it's usually in my bedroom, while my TV is down in the living room. Also I'm often watching 3D content on my AVP. The TV in my living room doesn't display content in 3D. It can't. It's just not in the feature set. It's deficient in that regard. It's still a very nice TV and I'm proud of it.


Having a big monitor that you can take with you on a trip, to use on the plane or on the train or in a hotel room is more possible when that big monitor is virtual. And when you're done with work, you can watch a 3D movie on a virtual Drive -in Movie screen.

 

[Serqetry]

And Apple has promised a sharper (and higher resolution) virtual display in an update that should arrive this year. So I'm waiting and seeing.

This is literally physically impossible without replacing the OLED screens with higher resolution ones. They could perhaps improve the rendering, maybe... but probably not much. They still have to contend with the fact that 4K is actually really low res when it's shoved up in front of your eyeballs for your entire field of view. There's a point where anti-aliasing and sub-pixel detail is as good as it is going to get, if it's not there already... so I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

[bluespark]

Okay, but hear me out: Make it also connectable to a headless, portable Mac — as close to phone-sized as possible. I would immediately buy a device that let me do computer things while, say, sitting on a plane, and with no screen for others to look at.

 

[vantelimus]

Lol... ok. Good job intentionally misrepresenting everything I said. I never said anything about 7 point fonts.

You are full of it dude. No one needs ”small text” (your exact words) for coding. You may be tired of arguing. I’m tired of the total BS, like your “small text like is used for coding” falsehood. IDEs allow fonts to be scaled. The size of text is not a semantic attribute of code. Cut the crap! You overstated a personal opinion as if it were an objective truth. Be honest and own your mistake.

 

[Serqetry]

You are full of it dude. No one needs ”small text” (your exact words) for coding. You may be tired of arguing. I’m tired of the total BS, like your “small text like is used for coding” falsehood. IDEs allow fonts to be scaled. The size of text is not a semantic attribute of code. Cut the crap! You overstated a personal opinion as if it were an objective truth. Be honest and own your mistake.

You're lost. You know exactly what I meant by "small text", but you're just arguing nonsense. Everything lets you set font size, what's your point? So people should set their IDE's font size to 24pt so they don't see the artifacts caused by scaling and perspective skewing on a low resolution screen? I already posted a very thorough article that explains and illustrates the problem with trying to replace real monitors with a headset. I made no mistake... but you are either in denial, or you can't comprehend how the technology works, or you're just trying to be an argumentative jerk.

 

[vantelimus]

You're lost. You know exactly what I meant by "small text", but you're just arguing nonsense.

if you meant something other that the plain meaning of your words, then perhaps you should not have made such a ridiculously false argument. I’m not in your mind. I take your words for what the mean in standard English.

Yes, people should set their IDEs to a font size that allows them to read the text. Is that really hard to understand? It is a lot cheaper to set one option in settings than to recommend everyone buy a $5000 6k monitor and squint at tiny fonts because they are too stupid to adjust their font size.

 

[Serqetry]

It is a lot cheaper to set one option in settings than to recommend everyone buy a $5000 6k monitor and squint at tiny fonts because they are too stupid to adjust their font size.

Wow real nice straw man there. I never said anything about buying 6K monitors. I use inexpensive 4K monitors, 4K is quite high resolution when it's not in a headset right up against your eyeballs and everything is 2D rendered aligned to the physical pixel grid.

I'm done. Please spare me any more of your nonsense.