Technology

It's the first expensive iteration of something that could become viable if costs come down as production scales up.

In fairness to Apple, it's a powerful device and is the sort of device VR manufacturers are trying to converging towards. Their's is an all in one unit, with powerful on board processing so it gives high quality VR without tethering. It also has a lot of sensors built in, both negating the need for external sensors and hand control devices.

Compare that to other high end VR, and the competition remains high end tethered devices such as the Valve Index which is an expensive headset, limited to a room with sensors, tethered to a decent gaming PC, and requiring hand controllers to interact with the world. At the other end you have cheaper all-in-one devices like the Quest 2 which try to do what the Vision Pro does to an extent but are too limited techwise due to the price point they're targetting.

A valve index is about £1k, and a decent gaming PC is about £1-2k depending on how high end you go. The Vision Pro is £2.7k ($3.5k, but pre-tax); more expensive and perhaps offering less than the PC would beyond VR but still not crazy far away numbers wise. And it is offering a paradigm shift towards how VR is likely to be in the future.

All the stuff about it being a "new" device type ("spatial computing") is marketing nonsense - this is an AR/VR headset but it is one that's ahead of it's time as an expensive gamble by Apple to take a stake in the future. Expect a Vision Pro 2 in the next year or two with similar power but a lower price, but also I'd expect other manufacturers such as Meta and Valve to be converging on the same type of device from the other direction. But I'd honestly expect it to be more like 5+ years before such devices with similar specs to the Vision Pro are mass market and "affordable". Like, £3k for a headset would be a no to me; but £1.5k for something that did that... that'd be expensive but getting into an affordable luxury for me. And is they were convincing around some of the "spatial computing" type productivity apps missing from game centred VR being a UIP, then it's more like considering a new lap top and a £1.5-2k devices starts becoming a real consideration.

And as an expensive gamble it seems to be paying off. Supposedly 200,000 sold so far at $3.5k a pop - thats $700m in revenue. Even if it's not massively profitable per device, thats a good user base for such an expensive product and hints this could be something that does well as the price comes down. This is well away from mass market appeal, but I can see a trajectory where this becomes affordable as a luxury computing device first before eventually becoming mass market.