Apple employees outnumbered customers at Vision Pro launch in San Francisco’s Union Square::Apple’s new Vision Pro headset drew a sparse but eager crowd to San Francisco’s Union Square on Friday, for pickups and demos.
It’s $3500 of course there wasn’t a “mob scene” for it.
Yeah, they’re pricing themselves out of their own market. It’s been happening for years but the recent economic shifts are making it more apparent.
The MacBook Air was $3200 (which is more like $4500 in 2024 dollars) when it was announced in 2008. Early adopters pay for the future of these things and 200,000 AVPs have already been sold.
I don’t think the MacBook Airs launch is a good comparison.
Sure there was an early adopter tax on being one of the first “thin and light” laptops, but people already know what you can use a MacBook for, there was already a large value proposition in having a MacBook, the extra cost was entirely being more portable than it’s full size counterparts. Everything you can do on a Mac, just way easier to take on the go.
I’ve read a few reviews on it, watched MKBHD’s initial review, and outside of a few demo apps they point to the vision pro having no real point to it. Which if true, then it falls in line with existing VR headsets that are a fraction of it’s cost and in a niche market, being three times the cost of your competitors is not a good position to be
That doesn’t alter the discussion around a public first launch event. Those who can readily afford it aren’t forming lines to buy it, they’re just ordering it
I’m almost thinking that Apple went too deep into AR/VR when it looked like there was a market for it. So over a year ago they knew this was dead-on-arrival. They’d already committed the R&D and all the facilities and materials for the first production run. Knowing its going to flop, and knowing they’d get only one shot to sell them, they hiked up the price to the point where they could extract the most money from diehard Apple fans before word got out it wasn’t worth it.
They sold out all 200,000 launch day units, so perhaps Apples only mistake was pricing it too low.
I speculate it is a test product to work towards ubiquitous ar glasses in the future. Basically to figure out the big problems, produce a few good apps, etc. before trying to make the true product.
It’s competing with the varjo aero, not any of the low end ar tech so it’s actually half the cost of its competitor. It’s still way too expensive for consumers, but that’s not who it’s aimed at
Valve Index+stations+controllers is 1k$
Which it doesn’t compete with at all.
I’m personally more exited for SimulaVR headset for spatial computer. Different target market though for sure
It’s almost, but nothing at all, like that.
Sounds like a good observation and analysis.
What’s yours?
I was just about to ask your opinion and why you thought my post was so toxic it deserved a downvote for a wandering thought, but your post history speaks for itself. Have a great day!
I’d say it’s more that they did a preorder. The available units are spoken for. If you got one, you might show up and pick it up… otherwise it’s not like you can walk in the door and grab one from the store. Also, it’s not like an iPhone that you can just play with on display, you need to book an appointment to try it out, so yeah, it makes sense that people aren’t gate crashing the door, there isn’t anything for them to buy or try.
They have an audience that will pay $1500 for a bloody phone.
You will notice through the magic of math, that 3500 is over twice as much as 1500 for a device you cannot carry with you everywhere everyday. The competition space for the Vision Pro is not iPhones, but more like the iMac Pro.
Yeah, and everyone that has had hands-on time with it has had about the same story. It’s pretty cool, it’s pretty, it’s the best thing we’ve seen yet, it’s really expensive, it’s still uncomfortable, it’s use cases are still drastically numbered, the software market for it is still very lacking.
Oh yeah, and ecosystem lock in.
Yes but that’s $1500 they can show off.
Are there a few weirdos using their Apple Vision outside? Yes, but they aren’t the norm.
Is it blood from dragon’s ass?
I went to my local Apple Store yesterday morning and saw one person leaving with an Apple Vision Pro and maybe a few people inside trying it out. It wasn’t crowded at all. It seemed like the store was pretty overcrowded with employees, though.
On the bright side, I was able to get in and out with my purchase really fast!
In the pics there are more punters than staff…
They are probably just being pedantic and saying “but those punters didn’t buy so they aren’t customers…”
Every shop ever
Aren’t demos by appointment only? What a trash article.
They are not, can’t even get an appointment until after the 5th. Currently they are first come first serve.
I’d love to fiddle with one, but they don’t have very many demo slots. Only 8 an hour at that flagship store.
Also, I don’t have the cash to buy one, so the demo would purely be to address some curiosity. I’ll probably just wait until I can walk in and do a demo in a few months.
I wonder if it’s fully locked down like ipad, or more relaxed like a Mac where you have root access and can sideload any app you want. If it’s the latter, my interest will be significantly increased.
lol you’re dreaming if you think Apple is going to introduce a new computing platform and not wall its garden off so it can take a cut of all sales. That’s just how it is now, and every year they take a little freedom away from macOS. Mac users haven’t had true root for years.
It’d be funny if the EU forced them to ;)
Very real possibility
I’m mostly just curious about the hardware and UX. Even if it’s not for me, they’ve done a lot of things that other VR / AR rigs will likely adopt.
Just like a Ferrari stealership.
Prediction: this will be considered Apple’s biggest product flop in decades, and may even unseat the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_5300 for worst in company history. The whole product line will be scrapped before 2027.
Fortunately they have the cash to burn on projects like this to see what takes.
I’ll post this in [email protected] so someone can call me on it one day ;)
I’ll take that bet. I’ve had a Vive for years, Apple’s effort addresses all of the issues I have with that headset. I’m excited to see what devs are going to come up with, there’s going to be some amazing apps coming out.
Why do you think there will be amazing apps? Low volume means expensive apps that don’t make a lot of money for the devs compared to, say, the much larger VR market.
There will be things like this:
If Apple can figure out how to license and broadcast immersive video live from sporting events, these things are going to sell like crazy once the non-pro, cheaper version comes out.
That already existed on psvr 4 years ago and I think take up was minimal. Again, it could be something that apple can popularise, now the technology is better, but it won’t be ground breaking.
Psvr has the issue of having to buy a console and the headset. Though they may be cheaper compared to vision pro they have the gaming stigma around it while this has the luxury brand on it.
How many billionaires will buy a vision pro vs how many would buy the psX + psvr?This is a device suitable for the masses.
Yes, but many millions of the kind of people that would be interested already have a ps5. For those that don’t, it’s still cheaper to buy both twice over.
It’s designed for vr, not at, so the video pass through is sufficient rather than great. It’s still a huge step up and hopefully, so is the apple headset.
The psvr2 is geniunly interesting. Alone for the adaptive resolution scaling.
Too bad it only works on PS for now
The groundbreaking part is to take that tech, refine it, and sell a metric fuckton of hardware. Groundbreaking is seeing all these disparate, unconnected technologies come together into something new.
Yes but the question is whether this can be mass market enough and is refined enough.
I worry that it’s a bit chicken and egg. I’ve a psvr and psvr2, for reference. Without millions of users, the market for a range of quality apps is poor. Then, of those quality apps, only a few will be truly great, even less revolutionary enough to sell a $3500 headset for one.
This is a big step up from existing VR headsets, it can do things they can’t, so I’m excited to see what devs can do.
Me too, but that assumes devs that have the time and access to do so. If it’s not mass market, they may not. In a way, hopefully it means that all vr has to use the same apis/design language eventually rather than a a new set of competing systems. Obviously, with seeing how the phone market went, none of the big companies will allow that to happen if they can avoid it.
And that’s the big dead on arrival red flag. There’s already some ecosystem for VR/AR, specially in games. But Apple is not compatible with any of that. If people could buy a VisionPro and instantly start installing and using the software they already own and have been using for a few years but with better hardware and a better experience, the story would be different and this would be a runaway success. But this is one of the cases where the walled garden and overall hostility towards developers from Apple will bite them in the ass. A few massive players have straight up refused to port their software for the Vision Pro, and hardware platforms live or die on their supported software. This is one where Apple can’t carry the whole burden of development of apps since they are already bogged down with keeping up and coming up with an entirely new OS and an entirely new UX. If they don’t open the garden and let help in, the Vision Pro will forever be a curious toy, not the productivity machine they want it to be.
If they don’t open the garden and let help in
What does that look like to you? I’m not sure what it is you want Apple to do.
I don’t give a fuck about what Apple does. Their actions and decisions are inconsequential to me personally.
But, entertaining the questions, they could’ve reach out to the developers of the most popular VR apps and games to entice them to port as soon as possible. The only similar thing I’ve heard was a small indie that made like a YouTube frontend, or something (IDK). And that was not on a Dev kit but on a emulator. Which has gigantic limitations. They could also allow devs broader access to the system, like allowing sideloading, kernel level modules, open source some part of the OS to allow people to understand how it works, tinker with and innovate over the possibilities that the hardware brings.
All those are things that Apple will never do though. And as a result, their hardware platform won’t be the bed of innovation they want it to be. Right now the vision pro has no killer app or must have feature. You can’t build the future by forbidding everyone from building unless they pay you out of the nose just to even see the building site.
I heartily disagree. This is a 1.0 product, and though it’s deeply flawed in so many ways, it also nailed interactions that other companies have struggled with. They’re going to iterate and pivot on this platform for the next few years (and sell cheaper models) and they will find the sweet spot. This platform is here to stay.
“Metaverse”
This is a 1.0 product, and though it’s deeply flawed in so many ways
So they release incomplete product.
Other comnies: we are making game for vr and will release it any second now. Aaaany second now. Done. By the way, we just releasing state-of-art vr set Valve Index with base stations and controllers that greatly improves over other vr headsets that costs like average headset.
Define “complete”.
A 1.0 product is by definition the worst product the company will make of that type. That’s no different from any other product by any other company.
There is no complete product. There are only products you can buy, and those you can’t.
How will they fix it? They need future tech. What Apple did right now is combine all the best current tech. It’s gonna be a few years until our tech is actually good enough for these headsets to be seamless.
You’re conflating the perfect with the good. The question is not whether Vision Pro is perfect, it’s whether it’s good enough for today. I happen to think that it is for the goals the company has set (well under 1M units sold). But it will of course improve rapidly every year.
This is not new. This is every new product Apple has introduced.
They’ve sold 200k preordered as of a couple of weeks ago.
That’s not very many for an Apple launch, is it?
This also isn’t an iPod. The audience for something like this especially at that price is still quite limited. To me it’s pretty obvious that this is a peek into the future. Apple will just be one of the many companies doing glasses like this but this will be big.
Over $700 million in preorders for something that expensive is massive
I would bet that R&D for something like this must be around several billion dollars, so this is not even breaking even when you add in marketing and production costs.
Right but this is preorder. How often does a preorder break even for Apple? How does this income compare to the size of normal preorders?
All R&D was already done before them. So they already break even.
The 5300 was a flop because it had multiple failure/recall issues. I doubt Vision will have these sorts of problems.
Not saying it won’t flop, but that the product comparison doesn’t feel correct.
It will be apples virtual boy
I’ll probably buy one when you can do a little more on it. It needs more AI functionality and needs to work in a moving vehicle for that price.
Apple died with Steve Jobs. Maybe Tim Cook should try carrot juice, because I haven’t seen any real vision from Apple since then.
Every year it’s just small improvement over product lines that already exist. Sure I appreciate to have widget on my screen now but where are the iPods, iPhone, MacBooks of today ? I mean revolutionary product that gave people lots of confidence into tech.
By now I would have think Apple would be already deep into artificial intelligence but no.
About the Vision Pro, what would Jobs (who refused to have stylus on iPad because it’s cumbersome) think of it ? Heavy, battery doesn’t last and you got a fucking wire constantly connecting the helmet to the battery ??
Honestly I don’t get it, it’s like headless chickens running in circle at Apple headquarters.
The M series chips are fucking incredible, that’s all I’ve got though.
Yeah the switch to arm chip can be seen as big in some ways but it doesn’t feel like a complete new product.
The Vision Pro is literally a new product line that has multiple innovations over current competitors.
Artificial intelligence is such a buzzword these days it’s tough to determine what your meaning is here. Apple uses machine learning all over the place.
As far as actual artificial intelligence - machine consciousness akin to a human mind - how would you know? Apple doesn’t make a habit of announcing their ventures before their marketable.
Without their respective batteries, the weight of the Meta Quest Pro is 522 grams. The Vision Pro is 532.
The three batteries in the power pack are 3000mah each. Again, not sure if the complaint here is overall capacity, or that the headset is power inefficient. These could be valid if they’d implemented recharging in a worse manner, but it can be charged while in use by either another battery bank or an electrical socket.
Ignoring the contradiction on Steve Jobs, yes he was persistent in his vision, but he also understood the physical limits of technology. A stylus at the time of the original iPad would not have been a slim, precision tool. Look at the Wacom CTH661 - bit cumbersome if you ask me.
There are criticisms to be made of the Vision Pro, and certainly of Apple, but you’ve made none of them here.
All of that is subjective, to me it really doesn’t feel like the revolutionary product that Apple used to deliver during jobs but I can understand how someone would see it different.
Personally beyond every physical criticism on the product, I just look at the wow factor. When the iPhone released, almost everyone understood how its the new shit and everything else is obsolete. Same for iPods. I don’t feel like Vision Pro made the other headset obsolete.
Beside about the stylus for iPad, I’m convinced it was not the size the issue but that jobs wanted people to interact with tech in the most natural possible way, aka finger.
It was his vision, for the better and the worst, but at least it gives a direction. Cook bought some time by slowly offering stuffs that jobs vision forbade, like a stylus, keyboard for iPad, bigger and bigger iPhone and new variants, customization on iOS, and so on. But by doing that he slowly killed jobs vision and Apple is left nowadays without anything else but desire for greed.
The Vision Pro looks just like another corporation product, nothing revolutionary.
Quick recap:
- new product line
- machine learning
- secretive development process
- unit weight vs competition
- battery capacities
- decade old product form factors
You can’t label any of that subjective and go on to say it’s all about the wow factor. As if there could be anything more subjective.
Cheers for the laugh though.
Oh come on, don’t flex on battery capacity and unit weight. This is stupid, anyone with Apple ressource can make an oculus quest with bigger battery, better display and lighter. That’s not what made Apple so wealthy, original iPhone was way heavier than other phone and had shity screen resolution, it didn’t even have a keyboard… yet they are all dead or heavily copied on iPhone.
And wtf does secret development process and new product line got to do with its success ? New garbage get developed daily and goes right to the trash when it doesn’t sell.
Well sure they could’ve made a larger battery and whatnot else, but it’s not like the Vision Pro is some slightly polished Oculus. The tech allowing for 12ms visual pass though is impressive enough without any of the other things they developed for it.
While your point about Apple’s tremendous resources has truth to it, I’d argue that even had they committed their entire cash reserve to the development of the AVP, it would still involve more people using the device than just the engineers designing the thing.
At some point diminishing returns mean you can’t refine much further. I think the regular release of barely improved smartphones is evidence of that. Eventually when the goal of a pair of glasses - or hell, even contact lenses - is reached, this first generation Vision Pro will be one of many milestones we look and wonder how we ever had something so bulky and awkward looking.
Oh and the point I had made about the secretive development processes was to counter the previous comment regarding Apple ‘not being deep into artificial intelligence’. No one outside of Apple really knows what they’re doing. They’ve been tight lipped about underway ventures since Jobs returned to the company all those years ago.
As I noticed I’m typing a reply to a several day old comment, I’ll leave a couple quotes Tim Cook made recently:
As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in… technologies that will shape the future. That includes artificial intelligence, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we’re excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year.
In terms of generative AI… we have a lot of work going on internally, as I’ve alluded to before. Our M.O., if you will, has always been to do work and then talk about work and not to get out in front of ourselves. And so we’re going to hold that to this as well. But we’ve got some things that we’re incredibly excited about that we’ll be talking about later this year.
If you read all this, I’m surprised. I’m surprised I bothered to type it out. Cheers.
Yeah I actually did read it and I guess we’ll see how it goes, if the apple vision pro become an absolute success and apple suddenly release ai driven feature but I still doubt it despise what cook can say.
There were rumors about apple headset many years ago, today there is nothing about apple and ai. They can work on it but it doesn’t mean it will lead to something, research and innovation can be money and time sink when it’s not driven by a global vision but instead rely on itself.
Beside one would think they would start by slowly including ai in their iphone first to see how it goes but even that there is not a single glimpse of it.
