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Kinda doubt about Vision Pros' future.
- Thread starter sunny5
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Seriously? Why do stand up desks exist?
And yes - I know what a successful launch is. And this is one of them. I’ve been through ALL of the Apple Launches - back to when the Apple ][ came out. My career is based on technology and understanding its purpose, how to use it, how to help others use it.
There are a LOT of people in this forum who are doing everything they can to disparage the VP (and everything else Apple). I don’t like Android devices or the OS. I don’t choose to go to their forums and act in a similar manner. Why would someone do that? Why come here and disparage an Apple product you obviously know nothing about? If you did, you would either be in the camp of enjoying it daily like I do - excited to see the daily changes Apple makes to this as the OS/Apps catch up to the hardware - or in the camp of - this is really cool - not for me right now, but I look forward to what’s to come.
I suppose they’re here because of Mac’s or iPhones. They see this avp as a waste of apples resources when they could be focusing on well..Mac’s and iPhones. You could probably throw in the Apple car as another wasteful pursuit by Apple.
But it’s a waste of time to be critical. It’s version 0. With 4-5k a pop and maybe approaching a million sold before it’s said and done, it’s a cheap version 0 run for Apple. The real test is the next version.
There is real demand for this but Apple has to go a lot further in with it then say atv+ or HomePods. If I was Tim I would say do what it takes. Immersive content and sports is priority for atv. The decision is made. He declared it the future. Make it happen.
With other services or products, he’s like let’s pull a string or two. See what happens. Welp not working out. Dump.
Look at it this way. He staked his legacy on it. It’s his baby. Sink or swim. But I’d rather sit and be excited to see where it goes than to constantly say what a piece of crap this is every other day.
If I’m critical going forward it’s in that regard. That apple isn’t doing enough for it. Not that it’s futile. But I’m sure others feel the same for other products like Mac and iPhone. Apple could be doing more but here’s AVP instead.
10 years went pass, iPhone, Apple Watch both went bigger and thicker. Electronics is not a new field anymore
It can just be a display, speaker, microphone, and camera add on that uses iPhone for computation. Especially with AI, it doesn’t need to run full apps to be ultra useful
What a narrow-minded take!
Anyone who's ever been to a planetarium knows the value and thrill of seeing a projected image of the night sky. Sure, experiencing it outdoors is better, but that's not readily available to many people without travel and expense. Ditto for other immersive experiences like visiting places many will never be able to get to, whether it's viewing the Earth from orbit or diving in the ocean. And that doesn't include applications in education like teaching anatomy.
I assure you the visual and auditory senses one uses with the AVP are just as real as any. And, as for it already having failed, you have nothing to back up your statement after less than a month. I don't know how successful it will be, but you don't either.
True. They are making some profit right now, based on materials costs. Development costs still puts the VP deep in the hole. We'll have to see whether they decide the possible future returns are worth the current financial cost. My guess is that they see it as the future and will keep it until a mass market version is possible.
If you look at streaming services they have been losing money for years but only now are they beginning to pay attention to profitability. In the case of Disney+ it has been close to 5 years. In some cases the decision is immediate, in others it can take years. I'm betting that in the case of the VP it will be years.
The thing about Apple products is that each has a unique use case in which it excels. Whether this use case occurs frequently enough to justify its existence will depend on the individual user.
For example, I remember when I used to accompany my students overseas, I brought my iPad along for blogging purposes, and left my laptop at home. The iPad was the ideal "portable computer" because it was (at the time) lighter, had inbuilt cellular, and easier to use in cramped situations like when I on a bus. The addition of a camera also enabled me to easily take photos of my students and insert them directly into the Wordpress app (bear in mind that this was before airdrop was considered commonplace).
At the time, I was also using a 5s, and while I could also blog using my phone, having a separate device meant being able to extend the battery life of my phone and not have to keep charging it.
By the time I returned to my hotel room for the night, I was done with the day's tasks and could focus on showering and resting. For that 1 week, my iPad 3 provided more versatile than the laptops my colleagues brought along with them. It wasn't more powerful or more capable, but simply being able to use it in places where a conventional laptop form factor was unfeasible made all the difference.
Likewise, it's not what the vision pro does better than a normal computer (we have had this discussion countless times with the iPad), but about what sort of scenarios would make a vision pro excel over a conventional computer? Offhand, the reviews I have seen make it appear to be especially useful to frequent fliers who don't need to have a separate computer or tablet on their already cramped airline table. They can put on the Vision Pro in the plane, watch content while keeping it private, while standing up and moving around as necessary. Meanwhile, their hands (and table) remain free if they need to eat.
It also appears to be a very useful external monitor for YouTubers who find themselves frequently travelling for product demos, though they may also just decide to make do with their laptop screen or wait till they are back home before working on their video.
So I guess the question isn't what it does better than a computer but whether you see yourself in situations where you wish you were able to consume content on a giant display as wide as your field of view, while standing / moving around and having both hands available for other stuff. Even if said use case doesn't exactly exist right away, one's usage patterns could always evolve to the point where the vision pro ends up being indispensable.
I think this take is what will keep AR/VR a niche product to be honest. It’ll have its market for sure like it always has, but it’ll struggle to convince the mainstream. It offers a new and unique experience but will often get a ‘so what?’ Sort of reaction from people happy with a computer not worn on their face.
I can see some scenarios from the examples where I think it would be really cool, like live sport and immersive movie watching. However live sport use will carry a hefty subscription cost no doubt and I’d rarely watch a film on my own. A product like this even priced at £500 probably wouldn’t peak my interest to be honest, let alone a three and a half grand device. Not for me Jeff.
The cost structure of licensing doesn’t include the same variables as a physical product. They still make money on hardware even though AppleTV+ as a service loses money.
That’s why they keep services longer… because they’re part of a content ecosystem accessible to numerous devices they make and sell.
The same cannot be said for Disney+... their streaming service doesn't tie into an ecosystem that helps sell other classes of product.
So the long and short is: Apple can lose money on AppleTV+ because it sells iPhones. AVP doesn't necessarily help sell other products, and it's got continued costs associated with it, including development, manufacturing, SG&A, support. AVP needs to take off quickly to justify its existence, but given that the VR market is projected to grow 30% year over year, Apple's share of that isn't going to be what it needs to be to cover the three-year increase in R&D spend.
So either R&D gets slashed and the product stagnates, or they kill it and put that money in something else that turns over better numbers.
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But what other product is there that they can get better numbers from? The desktop and laptop computers, the phones and tablets, even the watch are all mature products, that only get incremental updates no matter how much R&D you pour into them. The car didn't work out. I don't know what else Apple could put their money into that could bring in better numbers. Robotics?
Their product margins are flat to shrinking right now, and this will continue to be the case in part because of rising materials costs. The trend, and we're seeing this all across other industries, is the growth in services margins. For Apple this includes things like App Store, AppleCare, Arcade, Fitness, Music, iCloud storage, etc. Expanding services offerings is going to be key to Apple's longer term profitability.
This is why I think, from a capital allocation perspective, they would do well to start laying the foundation for a retail/logistics ecosystem similar to Amazon, but driven by much more intelligent search and not cluttered with crap products... 25-50 years down the line when the technology for wearables is small enough to garner mass adoption, the services ecosystem will already be in place to make no-click purchasing the Next Big Thing.
The more I look at this from various angles, everything is pointing to no-click purchasing being the thing that gets you to the things.
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Yep. They are a perplexing lot. I suspect the compensation for their effort is nothing more than inflated self-importance and an apparent sugar high from trolling.
Very cool and exactly what the Vision platform needs eventually. Thanks for sharing, nice work
The AVP seems to have attracted more trolls and naysayers than any other Apple product I recall. I'm not averse to reading well thought out posts on the AVP's shortcomings, but the people in this and other threads who either just joined and/or post incessantly aren't going to convince anyone and are tiresome. (That includes the ones who confidently claim the AVP is harmful to vision, when ophthalmologists have said otherwise.)
I should just accept that these threads are useless and stick to the ones where AVP owners, people interested in buying an AVP, and others with constructive comments do their best to help each other.
i have one and will return it. I think it's a very good experience but like many say it's a gen 1 product, a beta version. I don't understand why Apple sell a product like this (ok for dev but they could make a SDK and not public like this). Feel disappointing for an apple product. Too heavy and uncomfortable and too low FOV. Every time it's a relief to take it off
That's an interesting statement. You definitely shouldn't own one, ever, as having an HDMI port defeats the very reason this product exists.
I think this product needs more users than just devs for Apple and developers to get an understanding of how users actually interact with the device, and what real-life problems they run into that won't happen in a lab environment. If you're not ok with paying $4000 to be a beta tester, then yeah, you shouldn't buy this device.
I saw someone in another thread explain that they have Bluray and dvd disks with 3D movies they want to watch in VP. Sounds like a valid use case to me, not sure why you think such use will defeat the very reason VP exists. I would probably rather go for a dongle to attach to the dvd/Bluray player that streams the video to VP over wifi, but I can understand why some people would think HDMI port.
That’s kind of how I feel too. Sure, those are amusing things to do, but I never found it that it actually improved my computer usage.
For example, I watched TV on the couch while browsing the web intermittently. One scenario was using the Vision Pro ($3,500) and the alternative was watching a 65” QLED TV and using the 12.9” iPad ($650 + $900). I found that the TV was simply the better experience. Both were “spatial” in the sense that there were 2 flat planes of digital content in some orientation in my room. I found the traditional setup much more convenient.
It was easier to manipulate my “windows” with the traditional setup. My TV is always placed in an optimal position, flush with a wall, rather than having to position a video every time. It was simpler to just pick up/put down an iPad than launch and close/move a visionOS window around. With the Vision Pro, it felt like my view was cluttered with these large windows, especially when I wasn’t actively paying attention to them.
I also found it superior to interact with a physical UI - swiping and scrolling in particular feel much better than a pinch and pull (which uses substantial wrist/arm motion). I also wasn’t tethered with cables, didn’t have to wear anything on my face, and everything around me wasn’t blurry.
The only advantage of the Vision Pro is that content could be larger. However, I feel like after a certain (subjective) size, there are diminishing returns for larger screens. For me, my TV is well within that “large enough” range. It didn’t really improve the experience on watching on a larger screen.
For web browsing , larger was actually worse. To view the same content visible on the larger iPad, a VisionOS window had to be much larger, even at the closest distance. It was like trying to use an iPad that was twice as large, suspended at a more awkward position, with an inferior interaction method.
The Vision Pro was simply a worse experience at a much higher price. I experimented with several use-cases and it was a similar story each time. To be fair though, none of them were traveling and using it in a public space or hotel room.
From my experience during a VP demo, I agree that interacting with a physical interface feels better than the virtual spatial interface we get with the VP. But your use case of TV monitor + 1 iPad isn't the only way people use a VP. My use case would be having 2-3 iPad or VP app windows in front of me. That can't be replicated with physical devices. Well, it could be done by having multiple iPads or computer monitors stationed around you. But that setup requires a desk. You couldn't bring that setup with you to the living room sofa, or in your bed, or out to the backyard.
I know not everyone wants/needs a multiple monitor setup you can bring anywhere with you. If you are satisfied with TV and iPad in a fixed location in your home, then yes, the VP is pointless for you. Some people are never going to want a device like the VP and that's okay, we all have different wants/needs.
I’ve seen that as well. Understand HDMI is a cable and good ones aren’t flexible or very long. Plus, it’s a cable. This headset was designed to be wireless. IF there was a wireless HDMI dongle that provided 4K video and 5.1 or better sound then perhaps. But that doesn’t exist. Or, if a Blu-Ray player could send the signal over wi-if to a client on the VP, most have home networks that could handle it. Much better solution.