Apple hopes to convince people to buy its $3,500 Vision Pro headset using free 25-minute in-store demos::undefined
Oh. My. Goodness.
$3,500?!? HAHAHAHAHAHA
It is not meant for the end consumer at this stage, it is a tech demo and development kit.
The real consumer variant will probably be released in a year or two.
It should be marketed as a dev kit, but they’re marketing it for consumers
Well, why not capture some consumers at the same time?
This very article says that Apple is pushing it onto “walk-in” consumers.
So?
They need to build hype, and if that means they are pushing a demo on walk-ins,then I don’t have an issue with it as long as they accept a “No thank you” from the customer.
Did they say this or is this your pet theory? I don’t feel like that is necessarily the best strategy, since people won’t develop for it, when there’s no users and no users will appear when no one develops an ecosystem for this thing…
This isn’t really a “pet” theory — just economics. VR represents an entirely new product line, and with Apple’s expansion into services, a whole new way to value-add to those services and entire ecosystem; capturing more recurring revenue. This price point is based on new manufacturing costs at a much smaller scale than their other product lines.
It’s Apple, so it’ll never be “cheap”, but it can’t remain at this price point and stave off competition for long. Within 3 years they’ll either drop the price and introduce a pro version, or release an SE version, that’ll still probably be around $2000-2500 — but bringing it within reach of the people who’d normally buy “pro” devices.
You have to start somewhere. The iPhone was a game changer so it took of instantly. Something like an AR/VR headset is still pretty niche even today about 10 years after VR really became a thing.
So… I can’t buy it? If I can, you’re either lying, wrong, or have an agenda.
So… I can’t buy it?
If you can afford it you can buy it, the purpose of a product does not need to affect availablility.
you’re either lying
Why go straight into calling me a liar? This just shows that you don’t want to have a proper discussion.
wrong,
This is quite possible, I have been wrong before, and I will be wrong in the future, it happens, and is not the end of the world unless you realy fuck up.
or have an agenda.
I can’t figure out any agenda that I would push regarding the Vision Pro.
In the end, it is a theory, based on resonable data available to me.
I’d buy it if it was the kind of tool that earned me $5000… but it’s still really hard to justify the business use case for VR these days.
If I can lie on my couch while typing away on my custom virtual workspace it might be worth it but the resolution requirements make that unlikely any time soon
This thing is overpriced but there’s no way Apple ships it if they don’t have the pixel density to render text in a way that doesn’t make your eyes bleed. It’s being marketed as a work device, after all.
Also it’s too heavy to wear comfortably for long sessions
Drone pilot?
It also has basically no battery life and once that mostly useless battery becomes completely useless you are never unplugging that thing from the wall because you bet Apple made that battery impossible to replace!
The battery pack is literally just USB c.
Not impossible, just impossible to afford
And I thought Apple consumers were out-of-touch!
Have you heard of the Apple Cheesegrater?
Shit I’ve bought MacBooks for work that cost as much as that headset, and my current laptop costs about as much as this.
$3500 is nothing for a computer, let alone a prosumery AR/VR heatset with a computer built in.
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My work PC costs twice that. There’s Apples influence has nothing to do with my Thinkpad.
I’ve worked on workstations that cost as much as a nice car. Apples pricing only comes close because they charge so much for storage. When you’re working with triple digit gigabytes of ram machines it ain’t cheap.
Apple makes by far the best laptop out there. No machine comes close when it comes to performance and battery life. Intel has a decent performance per watt under load, but under light non idle loads it’s not even close. My Thinkpad is incapable of getting decent battery life. Lenovos 10 hour battery life is a damn lie. I get 30 minutes to 3 hours at best. Our work MacBook pros easily get 10+ doing the exact same workload. AMD gets close, but they’re falling down the same trap Intel has been for the last 10 years.
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A lot of tech, including computers, commonly cost that much for a long time. It’s not a totally outrageous for consumer tech.
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They could have made it stream wirelessly from your MacBook
yeah, no. People really don’t understand how much bandwidth you actually need to stream even normal 4k 60hz video, let alone something like this. For reference, when I was figuring out how to dump my pc in the basement and have my monitor in my office, I had to run 12-strand fiber cables to do it.
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take a deep breath and realize; if you cannot afford this, you are not rich enough to be part of apples target audience.
no matter how much you want to tell yourself that you are.
I didn’t know apple target audiance was a total of 400.000 people which is the total amount the’ll make of these.
Seriously this is a proof of concept for rich kids children to be test users. I doubt it will visible move the needle on their profits.
You have some strange ideas, do android users enjoy being the “target audience” of google?
I am loyal to no brand, own a mix of devices and boycot some. Love tech, fuck capitalism.
It certainly is a big beta test product. I see it like the Tesla Roadster.
Isn’t that kind of like saying that if you can’t afford 2024 MB S63 AMG then you’re not in Mercedes Benzs’ target audience? I bet the profit Apple makes from selling iPhones dwarfs the earnings from selling these goggles even if they’re successful.
Second hand my dude
But the biggest issue is it wont run facebook oculus apps
iOS doesn’t run android apps. I don’t think many people will care. Most apps can be ported.
The apple vision pro doesn’t have motion controllers like the quest line of headsets, so apps would have to be redesigned for hand tracking instead.
Also, apple said recently that devs have to cannot describe their apps using the words VR, AR, or XR on any platform it is on, they have to be called spacial computing apps, so anything with VR in the title like VRChat can’t get ported without a full rebrand.
Why would I want Facebook apps?
I think what was meant here is that it won’t run apps designed for the Oculus Quest lineup (which is based on Android), not the actual Facebook application
Half of the US can’t afford a $1000 emergency. $3500 for a toy seems steep in that context.
That’s what credit card debt is for!
Half of the US is over a hundred million people. The rumours are Apple has supply constraints that will limit global sales to about a million devices for now.
This can’t possibly be a mass market device - it’s just not possible right now to manufacture that many. The tiny screens are 3,400 DPI and 5000 nits (that’s about 10x brighter than a typical TV or computer screen). It’s going to be a while before tech like that can be mass produced.
They named it Vision “Pro” which in Apple marketing speak basically means “the really expensive one”. Their “Pro” desktop PC tower has a baseline price of $7k and fully upgraded it comes in at almost $13k which is actually cheaper than they were when they used Intel Xeons a couple years ago (those could hit something like $80k).
There will probably be a non-pro equivalent one day, which will be far cheaper.
Is 25 minutes a long enough in-store demo test time to have a $3500 wank?
The bigger question is what will you do with the other 24 minutes?
Yea what kind of privacy and amenities are provided?
Is this going to introduce “body tracking” similar to oculus hand tracking so it knows where the body is for it to become an AR wank? That’d be a game changer if VR wank.
Oh hey, it’s that time again. Copy-pasting from the last time around…
—
Because the price is always the main topic, I’m gonna drop a link to an AR/VR expert contextualizing the Vision Pro price within the current (well, 7 months ago) market:
Apple Just Beat the “BEST VR Headset In the WORLD”… and did it cheaper.
Norm from Tested on yt had good things to say after his hands-on with the headset iirc a while back. This is just the price of a flagship VR device ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Apple Just Beat the “BEST VR Headset In the WORLD”… and did it cheaper.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good bot, Piperman! Feddit Rocks and Youtube… nots…
It feels very much like most stuff that’s likely to be developed for it will have the feel of “museum exhibit at home” or AR-ified iOS app.
The inability to use any controller is going to lose them a lot of latency and precision sensitive usecases. It is very Apple to make it totally standalone, but it’s going to cost them a fair bit.
A lot of real time remote control usecases will be impossible for latency issues alone, it won’t be a good solution in most multiuser environments (both due to no relative tracking, but also cost and hygiene issues for shared devices), it won’t be great for bringing into public spaces (poor long range tracking, etc) or small spaces (limits gestures), hand tracking camera position means you have to hold your hands up and mostly open (accessibility issues), etc.
Even if the hardware can do more, Apple won’t give developers access to more.
All it has to do is impress people enough that they hear about the 500 dollar headsets that are almost as good. Or the 250 dollar headsets that are almost as good as those. As long as they don’t go as low as the 50 dollar headsets that are not as good relatively as being worth 50 dollars compared to the other headsets.
By getting it in the hands of a bunch of influencers, it’ll do what Apple devices always do, make stuff look like a good idea for normal people to use too, not just nerds. Just to show normal people, who have probably had limited or bad experiences with VR, that there is “a” price point that solves almost all their problems with it.
Most will balk at the price, but have their perspective changed anyway. And some of them will look into or passively hear about other cheaper options. And then practically priced headsets will gain more marketshare and software will be worth the financial investment to make. It’s unfortunately not a quick process, and it’s only one part of that same process. But it’s a pretty important part.
VR software has already been in a pretty good place for a few years, but it can always use “more and better”, as with any software ecosystem.
From an accessibility point of view, museum at home sounds amazing!
Id buy it right now if it was maybe $500.
Spatial computing is the future.
I don’t need 3 screens. I need a pair of spectacles.
Screens have always been the bottleneck. The phone tablet monitor tv.
Glasses can do entire field of vision.
It doesn’t even do spatial computing well. It can simulate a single 4k display and that’s it. You can have some other apps floating around you, but not much.
If I could simulate 8 4k displays all around me, or freely float my full blown Mac OS programs and resize them to infinity then I’d be cool with this. But I’ve got more screen in front of me right now than the vision could ever hope to do. And Apples “apps” are far too gimped to be useful. Notes and email are cool, but not much else.
Then it’s not spatial. Maybe they will bring that to the table.
That’s what we need. I agree if it’s a downgrade from your Mac.
It’s an upgrade from my Thinkpad.
But price is the issue.
Once devs get it. They can improve.
It uses foveated rendering, so yeah it is effectively close to looking at a hidpi display across your entire field of vision, in a sphere around you. And you can use it effectively as a virtual monitor with a Mac, but you really have to design for the interface for a good experience
I don’t believe Apple made this product to sell. it might be just marketing ploy to keep people talking about Apple and how they are always ahead of the curve. they have a brand reputation to maintain.
They don’t care if it sells or not. It shows the tech industry that they are still “at the forefront” and “relevant”. Apple can’t appear to be left behind. This is also a way for developers to jump in and start making things for Apple’s inevitable AR glasses that this thing was supposed to be. In 5 years, they’ll use all the data and development they’ve collected from this headset for their newer devices.
This is exactly right. They did the same thing with the iPhone. Launched with minimal features, riddled with bugs, the butt of every joke and cynical opinion, and let the consumers tell them exactly what was wrong with it in excruciating detail. 5 years later, a literal majority of all human beings alive had one in their hands (or similar products from their competitors). Will this specific product be any good? No, probably not. But in 10 years or so, it may very well be the next thing everybody has to have in order to function in society
If its amazing like revolutionary amazing it would change my mind, if it’s just a vr headset nope.
It’s a mixed reality headset that works. Still too expensive for consumers.
25 min of VR-Porn nice
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Its Apple, that will be 99.99$
Is this VR or AR or both? And how robust is the actual software support?
It’s whatever you need it to be, baby. Just hand over the cash and Apple will make your dreams come true.
To give a non-snarky answer, it does AR with external cameras and an incredibly low lag such that those who have tried it have said makes it almost natural (the resolution apparently isn’t perfect, but there is no discernible input lag when looking around which happens on other similar devices). But you can dial up the opacity to wind up in a fully VR environment. So, it is in fact, both.
Your question about software is a big one. Apple is advertising 1M apps available at launch (good) but these are iPad apps, which can run on Vision OS without any modifications by the developers (not so good). That does not mean it will be a good experience. I was listening to a podcast today where a developer clearly stated that after getting a chance to try their app on device at a lab, they totally stopped development because they missed the mark completely with their imagination and the simulator on how it should work. You’ll still be able to run their iPad app, but until they get their hands on their own hardware to iterate more rapidly, they’re giving up.
All that to say it’s unclear how many apps will be natively designed to work with it on launch, and if these will be any good.
Thankfully I don’t live in the US so I am immune to this particular reality distortion field. For now…
I’d buy one if it were useful enough.
How’s it not useful? It provides an additional display to the ecosystem and a kind of immersion that is simply unrivaled unless you’re with friends and family (weirdos)
The cost here is a bigger decisive factor, it’s meant for early adopters, developers and tech entrepreneurs who will actually influence how the general public ends up using it for.
I don’t think they were saying it’s not useful. Personally I can’t see myself wearing this often enough to justify the cost
I’d buy one if it were reasonably priced.
The price is always the joke, but this is aimed at commercial buyers right? Not consumers
Oh boy, you’ve got a lot to learn about apple consumers
A $2k CAD phone I can justify if it’s going to hold me in good stead over the next 6 years and have another 6 full OS upgrades straight from the manufacturer. My iPhone X held up great for 6 years, and only started struggling in 2013.
A $3,500 USD fashion accessory? What are they smoking, and can I have some?
Not trying to be pedantic, but did you mean 2023?
Lawl no worries about pedantry; my iPhone XS has no signs of slowing down.
Can’t wait to see people wearing those around the office. Thinking about it. if you remove the desk, monitors, keyboard, mouse and just sit down bunch of programmers next to each other with those goggles it can actually be cheaper for the company to run an office even at 3.5k per headset.
Imagine how many people you can pack in a small space. You only would need 2ft x 2ft space per person and you can put the entire company on a single floor!
/s
It’s Apple. I expected nothing less than the most ridiculously priced products to be produced by them. So the figure is eye watering but expected. If these sellout, as some predict, it proves unequivocally that Apple fanboys are the most rabid idiots in existence.
For a high end enterprise geared headset that functions as its own standalone device and doesn’t require any connection to any other computer to work, this isn’t even expensive.
This isn’t meant to compete with something like a Quest. It’s meant to compete with something like the Varjo Aero, which goes from $5-10k.
For a company deciding on implementing AR/VR, the cost to get a Quest Pro for $800 plus a $2500 workstation to power it, vs a $3500 Vision Pro that doesn’t need a workstation, it’s pretty comparable.
For a high end enterprise geared headset
That Apple wants to sell to John, Martha and their 2.5 children.
Company sells goods to consumers, more at 11.
There’s always people out there that want to be on the bleeding edge. People spend $2000+ on just a 4090 card, or $2000 on a stupid folding phone that breaks from a grain of sand.
People even pay +$2K for concert tickets…
Where 2.5 children? There, or here?
Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 does less than Apple’s Pro Vision and it costs the same. Is it really that overpriced? And the cost goes way way up from there.
it proves unequivocally that Apple fanboys are the most rabid idiots in existence.
Maybe you should look inward before making silly comments like these.