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Apple Consolidating Vision Pro Demo Areas in Stores Amid Rumors of Slowing Sales and Reduced Production
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Still they did improve the mini-LED panel for the 14"/16" MBP's. Its SDR output is now a max of 1000 nits vs 600 Nits with previous M3 14"/16" MBP's. The older M1/M2 MBP's were rated SDR output 500 Nits. Peak HDR is about the same. Gamers actually have a preference for mini-LED displays over OLED's for small panels. Regarding how many LEDs and zones its pretty good for such a small panel.
"The 14-inch MacBook Pro has 8,040 miniLEDs spread across 2,010 local dimming zones,
while the 16-inch offers 10,216 miniLEDs across 2,554 local dimming zones."
Sorry, but this was a mistake from day 1.
Apple is planning to consolidate the retail space dedicated to the Apple Vision Pro headset in some of its store locations, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said today.
Most stores have two tables dedicated to the Apple Vision Pro, one for display units and one for customer demos. Apple is planning to move both the demo and display sections to a single table, using the extra space to display the new M4 Mac models.
Gurman says that Apple is piloting this new store arrangement, and that the change will only be coming to some locations at this time.
Apple's plan to dedicate less retail space to the Vision Pro comes just two weeks after The Information said that Apple had reduced Vision Pro production and could stop making the device entirely by the end of 2024. Some factories cut production of Vision Pro components as early as May based on poor sales forecasts.
Estimates suggest that Apple will sell fewer than 500,000 Vision Pro headsets this year, even as the rollout of the device expands to additional countries. Apple suppliers have already produced enough components to manufacture between 500,000 and 600,000 headsets, so Apple does not need additional supply.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple will iterate on the Vision Pro as soon as 2025, introducing a new headset with a faster M5 chip. Apple is also developing a more affordable version of the Vision Pro, but rumors are mixed on when it might come out.
In a recent interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Vision Pro is "not a mass-market product" because of its high price, and is instead aimed at early adopters, or "people who want to have tomorrow's technology today."
Article Link: Apple Consolidating Vision Pro Demo Areas in Stores Amid Rumors of Slowing Sales and Reduced Production
I suppose that’s a bit more click worthy than. “Apple prepares for the holiday season.”
OH, and to make it even more clickbaity, always be sure to leave out that Sony could only commit to produce 1 million screens this year. With normal quality challenges, that would mean more like 400 to 450 units at the most this year. Which, what do you know, is less than 500,000!
OH, and to make it even more clickbaity, always be sure to leave out that Sony could only commit to produce 1 million screens this year. With normal quality challenges, that would mean more like 400 to 450 units at the most this year. Which, what do you know, is less than 500,000!
Literally? To sell 400-450,000 this year. They didn’t have access to more screens than that, so it was physically impossible to have expectations outside of this.
It absoLUTEly couldn’t have tripled it’s current user base, again, no screens.
Providing more floor space for the multiple new products Apple has brought out in the last 3 months as we enter the hottest consumer spending period of the year is indeed proof that Apple would like to make money. i am suggesting it is not the harpoon in the side of the Vision Pro this headline is making it out to be.
Apple's likely to close the year with 500k Vision Pros shipped. This product has the same pricetag as the top line Macbook Pro 16" with M4 Max. Which do you think will sell more units? Would the M3/M4 Max be failures if they don't sell 500k units in a year?
OK, I'll take your bait.
The M4 Max MacBook Pro is part of an established, vibrant ecosystem. Each individual model of Air and Pro represents one channel of sales toward maintaining the vibrancy of that ecosystem. The Mac already has its own self-sustaining momentum. Its relevancy doesn't need to be explained to a potential customer.
The AVP is a new product. It has to carry the mantle of its ecosystem by itself, to attract customers and developers, and indeed, Apple's own attention—as you say, ultimately Apple's job and motivation is to make money, not run a product charity.
Whether or not the AVP is a "success" is not something we are privy to. Apple has its own metrics and goals, I'm sure. It remains a product that will need to live and die on its own merits, every day. But the paucity of its "ecosystem" at this moment in time is not really a fact to be dismissed. Where will it be in a year, 5 years, 10 years? Who knows. But just like the AppleTV and HomePod are "beloved" but marginal, the slow progress of the AVP out of the gate does not point to the sort of epochal effect on how we work and play that its insufferable proponents keep declaring.
This is the realist take I’ve seen across MR and Reddit.
There are plenty of affordable VR headsets out there. But nobody wants it. Read the room Apple.
This is a good out, but if Apple wanted the screens, they would get them. They have the money to spawn up a new business just to produce them, or to pay for an existing business to dump its current product and focus on screens. They've done this multiple times throughout the iPhone's lifecycle.
But there's no reason to burn capital and endanger supplier relationships if what you have is expected to be, basically, a first gen prototype aimed at encouraging wealthy early adopters to subsidize future development in exchange for a premium product. In that mode, selling ~500k units is already bringing in around 1.75 B in revenue with a parts cost of 700M. Do you want to be pushing on price and supply chain to eke out every penney, or do you want to call that good enough and focus on the response from your early adopters?
Not really surprising. Apple built an exceptional version of a product most people don’t want. Given how much they’ve invested into it, they had to highlight it for a while, but it’s time for it to take even more of a back seat to their more practical, useful products.
To me I feel they were just over ambitious and tried to do too much with it, resulting in an unfocused and overly expensive product which has inevitably sold slowly
Quest moves a similar number of units to games consoles.
Putting goggles on your face may be a deterrent, but it’s not a barrier if you have an established use case.
I think apple had fairly low expectations for the VP even though they tried to hype it up as much as possible. Once sporting events and concerts become available they will sell a lot more. The problem is they won't be live for quite some time. So unfortunately they will have to be pre-recorded and viewers will only be able to watch them after the fact, at least at first.
Another feature the AVP needs is to be able to share content simultaneously with other nearby AVPs so families and friends can share virtual experiences together. This of course, means the price will have to come way down so multiple units can be purchased.
Apple didn't want to delay the release because they needed / wanted to get market feedback. If anything one could argue Apple mis-judged the strength of the consumer and of the overall economy. In the end, I think apple is taking a prudent and conservative strategy. The long term potential for VR to become more mainstream is there, but it will take time.
My local store has a large dedicated seating area (think a large squircle with 4 seating sections around the outside facing inward towards an empty carpeted area, with two large wooden cabinets on two sides). There is usually also at least one or two demos going on when I stop by the store during the week and often many groups of two to three people doing demos together on the weekend. That’s what I saw last Saturday at least.
No idea how many are actually sold but still trying to pump out the demos it appears.
No idea how many are actually sold but still trying to pump out the demos it appears.
Tomorrows technology today Tim.........More like 10 years ago technology today and priced 10x the price it should be.
Dead in the water as soon as they even thought up the idea to develop a VR/AR headset.
There won't be any other version after this, it's going the way of the Apple Newton.
Dead in the water as soon as they even thought up the idea to develop a VR/AR headset.
There won't be any other version after this, it's going the way of the Apple Newton.
I really think at the end of the day, Apple had one failed project with Apple car and potentially another with Apple Vision coming up behind it. To keep the bean counters happy a dev unit was shipped as a customer device in the hope that basically enough Apple users would buy anything from Apple that was new and shiny. Thus making the books look good and saving a black mark against the execs who had backed it. Then for reasons known only to Apple, they thought developers would fall over themselves to get an overpriced and unsubsidised VR set and develop for it out of love and faith that one day enough people would buy one to make their software viable. Amazingly a few developers just like some early adopter customers, did jump in. The majority however, did not and never were going to. The Apple Vision is really Pippin II.
Yes it would have.
It is a monitor for a single person with a 2 hour battery life that effectively runs iPad apps. It has no input controls besides pinching, so it can't be used for productivity - only media consumption.
It's not portable and effectively requires its own backpack to cart it around.
The only use-case that anyone ever put forward was watching movies on a plane. Except, most people just don't fly that much, most modern movies are more than 2 hours, and airlines don't allow it to be used during take off/landing.
Everything you can do with a vision pro, you can do better with a Macbook, iPad or iPhone. It really is just a very expensive monitor, and there are cheaper VR headsets that also aren't performing well.
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