Conversely the fact that you need special fit lenses and a store appointment means its going to be hard to test out and hard to buy. You're probably not going to be able to wander past the Apple store in the mall and take a quick peek in and play with the Vision Pro like you can with their other products like the iPad. Nor will testing your friend's necessarily be a good experience. Plus even in the U.S Apple Store's aren't that common requiring a multi-hour drive to get to in some places.
> Plus even in the U.S Apple Store's aren't that common
There are 270+ Apple stores in the US, I don't have the figures to hand but an overwhelming percentage of the country's actual population live within an hour of an Apple store. They are common, frankly.
I'm not defending the decision to require a store visit here, but lets not paint a picture of Apple store availability that doesn't exist. The number of people with disposable income in the US to purchase a 3500 dollar headset and actually want to buy one who aren't living under an hour from an Apple store is likely a very small list.
Yeah or in my case the apple store becomes a part of a trip, there's not one near my home but there is one near the beach house I rented this year, so when I wanted a better fitting waterproof watch band I just baked a trip to that store into my trip itinerary.
If I were in the target market for the vision pro I would totally schedule an appointment and drive a couple of hours to get a curated experience and feel confident I'd come home with the right combination of lenses and everything.
And there are plenty of people (including my 80 year old parents) who drive 3 hours from their small town in South Georgia to the nearest bigger city to buy products that they want to be able to see instead of our used online.
In my dads case, music gear
I even know people who would drive from the even smaller places than where my parents live who would drive to my home town to go the mall, movies and Olive Garden.
As described during the keynote, they’re magnetically held in place. You would need one set per user.
As someone that wears glasses with VR, it’s awful. The light gasket presses against them, gets tangled. The band presses against them. I can see why they didn’t bother making it an option, since I often put my headset away because of the discomfort. This is why the quest pro has optional light blockers, and why I never use mine. Leaving enough room for comfortably wearing glasses would make things huge.
You can. The Vision Pro supports a primary user that retains settings/user account/AppleID and a secondary user with gets a “guest” account that resets.
Based on how these work on many existing VR headsets including Quest 2, these are just insets that you can just take out. Probably held magnetically as well.
Do you share your iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, AirPods or Apple Watch with friends and family? It’s touted as a work machine first and foremost right? Do you share your work laptop with others? Apple exec logic I’m sure.
I get what you’re saying and it’s hard to describe (and never really does it justice) the experience of this technology. It’s something you have to experience yourself to understand.
I share my PlayStation and AppleTV with friends and family. And, yeah, my kid regularly uses my iPad and family members definitely use one another’s phones on occasion. Also the Vision Pro is expensive enough that not every family member will get one — if there’s one in the house it sure would be cool if everyone could use it.
It sure sounds like anyone in a household can use it but if anyone has a different eyeglass corrective lens prescription (very likely unless everyone still has 20/20 vision) from the primary user it’s a very substandard experience.
Even if they’re magnetic and easy to swap, it sounds a LOT clunkier than just handing someone an iPad. People are going to lose the lenses all over the place.
Heck, my dad loses his phone multiple times a week, necessitating a quick phone call to track it down. Are the lenses going to include built-in AirTags so people can locate them?
I don’t have a proposal. I’m skeptical of the entire market for this product. I’m taking a wait-and-see approach and I’m looking forward to reading one-year followups from early adopters.
Heck, I’m even skeptical of the iPad. I own one and I use it so seldomly that I have to charge the thing up from 0 every time I use it. But I recognize that a lot of people love them as consumption devices and a few as creation tools for some niche purposes, such as digital painting.
Apple already does laser engraving for products bought in the online store. For the price point of this thing, they can probably move engraving into the retail stores (not long ago, I bought a laser engraver for my hobby 3D printer for a few hundred bucks -- they're not expensive, certainly not by Apple Store standards).
As for getting lost, Apple already has their AirTag technology. While I don't know if that's already in these lenses, it doesn't seem like it'd be difficult to add.
I suck at optics, and optics is a hard topic, so I say it will full humility: I’m always surprised that headset manufacturer can’t correct for most of these vision issues in software.
I think you'd need to be able to control the direction of each photon coming out of the screen, so that it landed in the intended place on the retina after going through the misshapen cornea/lens. That's basically what a corrective lens does. Doing it dynamically for each thing we call a pixel indeed sounds like science fiction.
you could do it with lasers, using lasers to draw directly on the retina. I don't think there would be any way to do this with a pixelarray type screen.. maybe if you could map each pixel to a point on your retina and then modify the rendering .. maybe. the concept reminds me of a generative art piece that Kyle McDonald built: https://www.fastcompany.com/90167836/disco-meets-computer-vi...
Essentially pile up a bunch of mirrorballs. Point projectors at it. Then map where each pixel from each projector ends up on the walls/ceiling/floors.
I think it is just a weird coincidence, but in this thread price and share-ability seem to be negatively correlated.
Consoles, AppleTV, and iPads are at the lower end of the price range here, right? (Well, you can get an expensive iPad of course).
Laptop are expensive but personal, phones… definitely personal, tend to be a little more expensive maybe?
I dunno, it isn’t a straight line correlation but I don’t think the fact that the Vision Pro is expensive tells us much.
In have a Rift CV1, I enjoyed showing it off to people and got some party-game type things (Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes is great for showing the device off). But I don’t use it much solo, and I’ve shown it off to all my friends already, so I don’t use it much. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, but it hasn’t integrated into my daily life.
If I were Apple—word of mouth is good, but I’d hope the Vision Pro becomes something that sort of gets embedded in people’s lives to the point where they don’t care to show it off (either because it becomes personal like a laptop, or because it becomes boring like a monitor).
Your comment is greyed out as if it was downvoted a bit, which seems quite bizarre to me.
I think we’re pretty clearly talking about a small number of contrary data points, here? I’m not trying to prove a general trend at least, just point out that we should at least double check the assumption that expensive implies shared.
If someone is really invested in that idea I’d love to see an argument for it, rather than silent downvotes.
I know plenty of middle class parents who bought their teenagers an old beater because they didn’t want them driving the car they needed to get to work or their expensive car.
Wrecking your first car is almost a teenage rite of package.
Again we are talking about people who are willing to spend $3500 on a headset. Not exactly the demographic of people who are “sharing a family car” and that don’t statistically have separate cars for the parents and don’t either buy their kids a car or subsidize them in some way to help them buy their own.
I know I never let either one of my sons drive my car alone and I bought myself a new car and handed my older one down to my older son and bought my younger son a car before he had a license.
Ipads are regularly shared in families and vision pro is more expensive than a top range tv which is shared in households. It's a hard sell if if can't be adapted to be used by multiple family members at its price point.
Regardless of Apple's marketing, for the vast majority of people this will be a media consumption device first and a media creation device second, just like the iPad. And you absolutely share your media consumption devices (television, game consoles, iPads) with your family/housemates.
Eh, you have a point. I am not exactly keen on sharing my Valve Index with people because hygiene is important to me. My wife can use it if she wants to.
However, we're talking about a 3500 US dollar (without tax) device and a novelty. Of course people are going to share it if they can.
It’s pretty reasonable to share iPads and Macs between people, especially people who can’t afford individual devices for everyone separately. If I bought a VR headset for $3500 anyone being able to use it would be extremely useful
They do sell more expensive iPads. Not exactly unreasonable to want to share a $1000+ nice iPad Pro among a few people rather than buy multiple bottom tier devices.
Apple doesn't want to share even for iPad, as they don't implement multi user feature (except educational usage). I expect that it's same for Vision Pro, and it seems to natural for me. (I argue iPad should support multi user or guest)
Yes, it’s indeed very common to share iPad with kids and to have a laptop shared amongst family members. That’s why users exist and were such a hugely requested features of iPadOS (something Apple actually took ages to acknowledge because well, Apple).
It shouldn’t have to be explained that dedicated video game hardware and personal mobile computers have very different use cases and sharing cultures around them.
Do you share the use of your tv with friends and family?
An Apple enthusiast not willing to go to the Apple Store? When I went to NYC, the Apple Store there was like nerd Mecca with people taking pictures in front of it.
Why xR enthusiasts don't? Though population is smaller, I suspect that they want to buy it more than average Apple enthusiasts (for %). They may already imagined use cases. They know that equip HMD is okay. xR sometimes needs enough big room but Apple enthusiasts haven't prepared for it.
you underestimate apple enthusiasts. they may not have already prepared, but the device isn’t already out.
besides, not all apple enthusiasts are wealthy. some will prepare last minute, by selling furniture to make space and help fund the headset. it doesn’t matter if that sounds silly, if it happens.
this is why apple goes slow. bring the ecosystem enthusiast to the object by attempting to integrate the object into the ecosystem first. start with the most eager, guide them in, let them deal with the growing pains, convert enough to full believers in the new object.
public-ish beta with an exclusive-ish signup fee.
apple isn’t merely training enthusiasts in how to use a headset. they are training fans that sell product. enthusiasts talk. easiest way into the ecosystem is with a guide, and even better if that’s a friend or loved one not getting paid to do so.
the least important part about this product is the product. it’s expanding the ecosystem into new territory. show apple enthusiasts that perhaps they want to be xr enthusiasts.
Most people live in urban areas though. Nova Scotia has only a million inhabitants and half of them live in Halifax where I assume the Apple Store is. If something needs fitting and prescription lenses it seems reasonable that a physical location needs to be visited and this is the kind of trade off one makes when moving to a rural area. I'd bet that this will still be convenient for the vast majority of the population.
That one store in Nova Scotia is pretty much the Atlantic Canada store being the closest for most people in Newfoundland, PEI and a huge chunk of New Brunswick (on the Western side the Québec City store is closer maybe, still hours away). There's plenty of non-rural areas there without an Apple Store.
There is still 4 U.S states that lack an Apple store entirely. It's not like Wal-mart or even Best Buy.
Good point. Telling how xR device good is one of the most difficult thing for consumer market. Trying is the only way but it's annoying to setup. Let's see how Apple solves this.
The big win I think will be the App Store rather than just the Apple Store. the App Store will provide reducing the need to take the headset off to use general apps.
When you use an oculus, if you need to do something like reply to a text, check an email or reply to someone on social media, you have to take off your headset or kill your current task and switch to virtual desktop.
Having all your iOS apps on it, and being able to multitask means people won’t be taking off their headset as often and they’ll not have to consider dedicated VR time.
This has been mostly missed by reviewers and pundits. They’ve presented a primarily sitting/static experience; the battery is for when you need to walk around between sedentary moments. In that context 2 hrs is going to be (mostly) plenty
The first thing Apple says about battery life is "all day while plugged in". The device is intended to be used as long as desired while plugged in, just like a laptop.
The reasons I would not like to have one of these devices ;
* Apple's closed moat
* App store lock-in
* 'DLC' model whereby not a single thing you do on this $3,500 device will be free - and no matter what app you choose, Apple takes 30% of whatever revenue stream that app wants...
* The piss-poor apple fix-service market, and their shitty designs of the iphone which break so fn easily that VCs (YC+) have had to invest in cottage industry of phone repairs
I've had iphones since the first day of launch... and while I prefer them over android, I still hate ios ecosystem.
The infra-mechanics of it are awesome, but compared to the smarmy and condescending greedy Apple, i still hate ios.
While I sympathize with feeling disappointed in having to pay for apps for use with such an expensive headset, I believe that its price would have severely restricted the number of free apps available for it in the first place. Developers are going to want to recuperate their investment, and that'd remain true even if it were possible to install whatever one pleased on it.
It's technically possible to develop on the simulator alone, but given that the simulator is confined to a 2D window on a computer screen I can't imagine that apps developed in this manner would be able to stand up to competition developed without such limitations.
Yeah, I understand both sides of the Coin. I appreciate your response, and it deepens my concern is that there will be an entirely new DLC-ish content model whereby you have one price for an ios app - and then a different price for the "Apple Headset AR *EXPERIENCE*" version of all the apps - and certain features will be lock-outs to non AR-paying-premium customers...
Its just FN financially-dystopian
---
@scarface_74 ;
"*May you please ELI5 expand on your comment - as I am OOTL and would like to understand what you mean, precisely. (because I want to learn, kthxbai)*"
Surprisingly the GP didn't include price of the device as a reason, but the 30% Apple cut/likely uplift in price that developers need to charge to recuperate development costs - which are far more significant than developer hardware costs.
A non-Apple device without the moat would be better. GP also didn't ask for free apps.
> The reasons I would not like to have one of these devices ;
I'm sure there are a number of people here who will agree with you.
On the other hand, the fact that Apple now has a $3 trillion-with-a-"t" market cap indicates that most people do not care about any of these issues. Not in the slightest.
Having replied to a text, checked my emails and responded to people on HN all from my first-gen Oculus Quest, I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. Do you not find a web browser sufficient for those tasks? Is there something inherent to the Quest ecosystem that should be stopping me here?
1. Many people prefer apps over browser experiences.
2. Many commonly used apps don’t have a browser experiences with equivalent features. Take Instagram for example.
3. With the Quest , you can’t really multitask, except for the Quest Pro.
The Quest 1-3 are equivalent to game consoles in many ways. I can use a web browser on my PS4. It doesn’t mean it’s a full productivity system with multitasking.
> The big win I think will be the App Store rather than just the Apple Store
It won't be using the app store, though. It's using a brand-new store, built from scratch. No iOS apps will be there unless the authors rewrite them to be compatible with visionOS.
I’m squarely in the target market for the Meta Quest, but the fact I have no way of trying one before I buy, even just for a few minutes, is my main blocker for getting one.
This is particularly important for a) new product categories where customers aren’t yet sure they want/need it, b) products that “fit”, or don’t, and c) expensive entertainment products. These headsets are all three, so it’s really important.
That's typical for most products like that but it doesn't solve the problem. The issue is only partly "will I like it" or "will it fit me", for which a free return policy can help (but not fully solve), but a lot of the issue is "why would I want this". If you walk past one in a shop and can give it a go you're much more likely to overcome that than spending £300 on one and having to go through the return process.
Aside, I hear a lot more about free returns from people in the US. In the UK they are seemingly near-universal, but there is significantly less willingness to return outside of specific categories such as clothing. I have a little experience working in a retailer (as a software engineer), and US return rates were far higher than UK/EU return rates, and this was apparently considered typical.
I can understand this being a differentiator to other AR/VR products, but that is not exactly what the comment I replied to said, they said the “killer app” was the ability to buy it at an Apple Store. Short of a few folks with too much extra cash and curiosity, just being able to try it before you buy isn’t what I would refer to as a killer app. The “killer app” is what gets the main market populace to the store to even consider it.
I think the friction can come across to some customers as good service, and help launch a category.
The Apple Watch was initially sold at fitting appointments in store, and I think that was important in establishing it as a normal thing to wear and even a fashionable thing to wear in some cases, and helped cement the product in the mainstream.
Tailored suits is another case where there’s a premium price, premium service, but a lot of friction. It’s not always bad.
They’re also probably supply constrained enough that the friction doesn’t matter for the first version or two.
Apple absolutely needed to normalise the idea that a £300 black puck was Luxury Fashion. See what happened to Google Glass for when a company fails to make a wearable product fashionable, and we've been wearing expensive glasses for hundreds of years. Watch nerds still shun it today, although Apple has managed to break through as much as they needed to make it a success.
They absolutely did. Smartwatches were mostly seen as tacky before the Apple Watch. That’s part of why they chose a different form factor and partnered with luxury brands for bracelet. For Apple to make wearing them seems normal was not a given at all.
The Moto 360 was out before the Apple watch. I know that for a fact because I got one on the release date. They were pretty hard to find when they came out.
Apple was late to the game with smartwatches and didn't do a single thing to convince people to wear them.
And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.
I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
> And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.
Source please! That's not how I remember the release, I recall it was very well recieved and sold out everywhere with the battery life being the biggest complaint.
> I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else. Your opinion is not the general consensus or a source for anything so find a reliable 3rd party to back you up that isn't a random blogpost by Joe nobody.
> I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same world than some of the commenters here.
Here is The Verge review of the Moto360: [https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review]. A few selected quotes by me: “It’s designed to prove that smartwatches don’t have to be ugly.”, “It’s not a gadget, it’s a watch”, “At 11.5mm, it’s a little thick”, “ Everything before it was a screen on your wrist”. And that’s the Verge being incredibly nice with the 360. Truth is it was very much still seen as a tacky piece of technology bolted to your wrist.
It took me two minutes to find by the way because this kind of reviews were literally everywhere in the years leading to the release of the Apple Watch.
> you think Apple invented wearing watches as a fashion statement with their release of the Apple watch in 2015.
No, I said that Apple successfuly turned smartwatches from something seen as gadget into something seen as a proper acceptable watch, which they most definitely did as I have proved to you with my previous message (which you are conveniently ignoring by the way).
The watch industry is very fashion conscious. Swatch Group managed to turn mechanical watches - a clearly inferior product which not only can't keep time properly but has to be serviced every couple of years - into something of seen as timeless and the embodiment of success so clearly Apple was walking a well paved road.
It only fits because if you consider Android a nerd OS (I suspect this user does) then your perception will be that everything Android does is for nerds.
It doesn't prove anything at all and Apple definitely did not make watches fashionable in 2015.
Before the Apple Watch, no mainstream celebrities were photographed wearing smart watches. After the Apple Watch, celebrities are regularly photographed wearing just one type of smart watch – the Apple Watch.
Whether you like it or not, for most people, celebrity culture drives luxury culture, and even in the top end markets it's still a leading indicator even if it's not driving it.
I'm open to hearing constructive arguments against this, but it seems very clear to me.
some people wear them, most of them clueless I-wear-it-too crowd. I see a lot of people around me / commuting wearing Garmin watches (ie fenix 7 pro), now that's a conversation starter.
There used to be a Microsoft store in the big mall near me. It turned into a babysitting service for parents who dropped their kids off to play with the Xbox.
There's a non-trivial portion of population that is familiar with the concept of having products fit to them personally: made-to-order uniforms, glasses, other sorts of assistive products.
I find it surprising that this is less common than it was in the past, and that people are more willing to put up with something that’s a subpar fit for them. One tech example that would benefit from custom fit are in-ear headphones. It would make sure that product is a perfect fit for every customer every time, rather than roughly every single customer having to put up with a suboptimal fit and poor comfort.
Fitting and customizing things takes time and is expensive. That fully explains the trend. Before industrialized mass production, making an item by hand and to fit someone's specific needs was only slightly more effort than to make some "average" fit item.
I don’t think people who pack Apple stores are target audience. From my experience they’re either not a target audience (older, non tech savvy) or lack funds (teenagers).
Can we please get rid of the stereotype that older people aren't "tech savvy"?
Older people today have been using computers since they were in their teens or twenties. Conversely, I know a 20-something woman who can't understand why her iMessages quit working when she switched to an Android phone, despite explaining it to her multiple times.
I always hated that stereotype too. Those older people were the ones to design our current processors, operating systems, and the internet and web itself. The people who sent man to the moon would be nearing 80-100 years old already.
The manual learning process of ordering special fit lenses, adjusting the headsets, etc would be a great fit with Apple’s store model.