My hope is that the Vision Pro is like the Apple Watch. It launched without a clear idea of why people would buy it--originally Apple tried to sell their bland aluminum box as a fashion accessory--and it was only after multiple iterations that they found out health and fitness was the main appeal and focused on it. If they pay attention to how people do use VR headsets, maybe they can do that again.
The cost of the device is way off. Apple watch is still vaguely in line with the prices of other nice ish watches. $400 or so. Expensive but not otherworldly so. Vision pro is so expensive you rule out the middle class. Its price point was conceived by people who haven’t left northern california for some time.
For that matter, I don't think any other Apple products are so out of line with competitor's prices. Airpods, iPhones, and iPad are also about the same as Samsung/Google stuff. MacBooks are marked up, but still in range of Wintel machines. Same for their workstations. Then the Vision Pro rolls out at 600% more than the competition, and doesn't sell. Pitching it as a work machine was shooting themselves in the foot, too: a $3000 MacBook is so much more capable than a Vision Pro it's absurd. The VP is using the base processor from MacBook Airs two generations ago. I mean, come on.
> originally Apple tried to sell their bland aluminum box as a fashion accessory--and it was only after multiple iterations that they found out health and fitness was the main appeal and focused on it.
Wristwatch fitness trackers had already established this as baseline market fit long before Apple. The benefit of the Apple Watch for me is to not have to carry a phone in my pocket and still be able to do smartphone things like message, pay for things, or even make calls if I need to. Then the pandemic needed you to scan QR codes to do contract calls, and then normalized QR codes for restaurant orders, so I'm back to the phone and my watch gathers dust.
> originally Apple tried to sell their bland aluminum box as a fashion accessory--and it was only after multiple iterations that they found out health and fitness was the main appeal and focused on it
As a sibling notes, we already had had fitbit for 6 years by the time Apple came out with the Watch. They tried to make it about more than fitness and eventually conceded that that wasn't happening and focused on the market that existed before their release.
So if this plays out this same way then in a few years Apple will finally concede that VR is for video games and finally start focusing on the gamer market.
The Palm equivalent in that comparison would be Fitbit and possibly Pebble. Apple waited until there was a proven market in wearables, then figured out how to combine that market with the strengths of their existing ecosystem to improve upon value. Then they propped up the model line with $$$ until they actually became good enough for people to buy.
I’m relatively optimistic they can do that here too, but that device needs to have a model that does everything it does today (well, maybe not the creepy visor eyes) and more for less than $1000 and at about 2/3 the weight max, before I think AW-like adoption will possibly happen.
They have a long history of ridding the cost curve down, but it’s not that fast. The 2010 iPad was 720$ adjusted for inflation, the current iPad better in basically every way starts at 350$. Original 2007 iPhone would be 908$ inflation adjusted while the iPhone SE is 429$.
My guess is it’s either discontinued or the 2040 Vision (non pro) is going to be strictly better in basically every way but still more than 1000$ inflation adjusted. But honestly if it’s 1/3 the weight and essentially strictly better in every way that could be quite compelling. There’s definitely a point where headsets are going to be comfortable enough you can forget they’re there, and ~2k for something you’re using regularly for 4+ years isn’t crazy money.
Pricing the se and base model ipad is a bit disingenuous. You look at the flagships and they kept up with inflation adjusted pricing. Iphone and ipad 1 were flagships. Not old hardware released for a song.
I wouldn’t call either of them a flagship product, just the product. They added new titles for those premium products. At release it was called an “iPad” and in 2024 they still call the base model an “iPad” while also having an “iPad Air” and “iPad Pro.”
It makes sense as a strategy, a mid 90’s 2,000$ desktop is ~5,000$ today inflation adjusted. Few people spend that on a desktop today the market just shifts and you need to keep up. Meanwhile there’s a tiny percentage of people who just don’t care that much about money so you want something to milk such people for all they are willing to spend.
Exploration seems like an interesting use case. Probably more than gaming or wearable monitors in spite of the bubble here.
I'm still a bit meh on the Apple Watch in spite of buying an early one and then an Ultra that I got a good deal on. I don't care much about the quantified health thing and the battery life is still an issue even with the Ultra. Like for hiking though.
