this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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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:
https://www.si.com/fannation/racing/f1briefings/news/this-f1-virtual-reality-teaser-brings-sport-to-a-whole-new-level-lm22
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.
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"
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.
It will be apples virtual boy
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.