Hopefully, of the many things Apple learns from the Vision Pro Gen 1 is that building a massively over-engineered Rolls Royce MR face-computer is that they’ve finally hit a wall with both their bonkers product pricing scheme and their magical thinking about their internal product visions always seamlessly translating to widespread consumer reality. I mean, especially on the latter point, they’ve been falling flat for a few years, but mostly with smaller products and services, but now it’s happened with the launch of a major new product class— and it has failed spectacularly.
Don’t get me wrong: the Vision Pro is revolutionary wrt what it can become, but Apple released a product that was way too fucking expensive and which didn’t have the ecosystem of support functions to make it clear to everyone even what it’s for. It’s not an MR/AR/VR headset. It’s a FACE-COMPUTER which operates in MR only, and very few people can really wrap their heads around using a computer only that way, especially since even Apple hasn’t made it work that way very well or even made a case for why it should (outside of extreme edge cases)— yet.
This is future tech for a future when we’re ready for and need it. Right now, people just want an MR peripheral, not a whole ass FaceMac. And - for goddamn sure - nobody wants to pay for one.
Man, you’re spot on with that last phrase, at least, for me. All I want is a MR headset comfortable enough to wear all day, and to be able to manage virtual windows and/or monitors comfortably in front of me. The rest I genuinely don’t care about. I dream of the day I can replace my big monitor (or multi-monitor setup) with a lightweight pair of fancy goggles that would give me all the monitor real estate I would ever want.
It also has a number of core problems as a face computer.
As Casey Neistat’s review video showed: you can’t use the thing on transit or even walking down the street. Any open windows stay in the physical location you opened them.
I can see both setups being necessary… If im sitting in a chair, I don’t think I’d want my virtual monitors to be following my head while I move, I’d still want them to be roughly around my keyboard and mouse. But using it while walking, they absolutely should be floating around my head, keeping the main one at some fixed angle.
Generally speaking, Apple’s very good about “hitting the now” with new tech, but they really missed the mark with this one. This tech is just too far ahead of its time. This is a real General Magic moment.
Exactly. Not only is it too expensive, but it doesn’t have a “universal” killer app or use case. What I mean by that is something a lot of people could use it for.
There are quite a few use cases for the device, but many of them are edge cases. For example I think the Keynote (Apple’s PowerPoint) virtual presentation mode is a great way to practice a presentation (you stand in a large room with the presentation behind you on a canvas and an audience in front of you), but how often are most people going to need it?
I personally loved the F1 demo one guy made with a 3D track map with the option to glimpse at onboards an whatnot. But how large of an audience would that have outside of hardcore F1 fans? Still, immersive live sports would probably be a thing, but without a large user base the broadcasters won’t bother making an elaborate (and costly) stream with added features exclusive to Vision Pro.
I’m not sure if Apple can fix this by “simply” releasing a second generation model, even if it somehow came at just half the price.
I can think of 100 use cases just for me. Maybe 500.More for other specialists in other industries. What I can’t do - even as a UX designer - is even imagine 100,000 use cases, which I can for… a phone or an iPod or and iPad. More even.
And Apple hasn’t engineered this device for those use cases. If they had, and marketed this device as such, we would be having a very different conversation.
You’re factually wrong about several things in what you wrote but, more generally, I think you’re very wrong on what it is, what it can become, and why it should exist. You can’t say that it’s failed spectacularly unless you know what the goals and targets were so I think it’s silly to even try to make that point, much less without anything to support that kind of assertion.
Even the absolutes in which you speak are wrong. I paid for one and am happy I did. I plan to buy more of them as our usage expands and it will pay for itself before the end of the quarter. If it gets better than this with successive versions, that could be considered a major success. I think everyone can agree it’s a niche product right now but to say that nobody wants to pay for one and that it has failed is just nonsensical.
Strange— you say I’m wrong, yet you don’t say how or about what, nor do you offer explanation or evidence. Also, I never said it “failed” nor that it was a “failure”, but at least you acknowledge I said that it’s a niche product (which sorta contradicts the “failure” claim, doesn’t it?)
I’m glad you like yours, and I also look forward to future iterations.
You literally said “it failed spectacularly”. If you can’t even be honest about things that people can verify right above my comment, then there’s no point in responding further since you’re obviously not discussing this in good faith.
I owned an original iPhone and saw its immediate potential as a revolutionary device. That thing got me laid more than once.
This is different.
Look, I see what this could become, but Apple hadn’t thought through some important parts of creating an entirely new computing UX. And the device’s expense and design are serious problems that devices like the iPhone didn’t have to overcome.
Everyone immediately knew how to use and integrate the iPhone into their lives, despite some very vocal critics and some valid complaints. The Vision Pro is a device that has no clear purpose, no “killer feature”, and whatever allure it may have is worn off by its outrageous and prohibitive price brought by the fact that’s it absurdly over-engineered.
The iPhone launched without an App store. It later went on to define the concept of having a “killer app.”
It is clear from the article I linked that there were tons of people who didn’t know how the iPhone fit into their lives. That’s hugely revisionist history. All of the complaints about the VisionPro were made about the original iPhone. For instance:
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item,” said then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
People said it was too expensive! Here’s some more:
To summarize: the iPhone is expensive and fails miserably at its primary function of making telephone calls, but other than that it’s really great.
I still wouldn’t buy one for everyday use.
We like our strategy. We’re selling millions and million and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones. In six months they’ll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace
I, personally, was a very late adopter to smart phones, joining when my motorola flip phone was stolen out of my hand during the iPhone 3g era. I later jumped to Android for the One Plus One, and stuck with that until jumping back to Apple devices years later.
But you could point to the Apple Watch, or the iPod, or any number of successful products that Apple has brought out and find the exact same things being said.
As for the VisionPro, all of the reviews I’ve seen for the device have been universally mixed-to-positive. They generally share your sentiment that it isn’t clear yet where it fits in, but that it is an incredible, magical, device.
The most negative review I’ve seen has said that it’s great but not worth messing up your hair to use.
But to claim it’s universally panned is absolutely not true.
It’s a great device that lots of people who can’t afford one are complaining about. That’s it so far.
You’re comparing apples and oranges here, while at the same time both overblowing the initial criticisms of the original iPhone while ignoring the amazement and praise it initially got compared to how little praise weighed against the (ok, near-) universal criticism the Vision Pro is getting.
It’s nowhere close. Not by galaxies.
You, yourself, admit you were “late to the smartphone game”— I was there, and I can tell you: pretty much everyone had iPhone mania. Stores couldn’t keep them on the shelves. They sold on eBay for outrageous markup. And while a few didn’t like them, most people adored them despite their quirks.
I was late to buying an iPhone because it was a stupid, expensive, product that had no use in my life.
I was wrong.
And literally you are saying the same things that I quoted about the Apple Watch, and the same things were said about the iPad.
Not all three had the devices flying off the shelf in the first year.
But aside from that, I have a Vision Pro, and I love it.
It is better than all of the other VR headsets I have used, which is a relatively extensive list. I currently own the Index and PSVR2. And I would rather pay Apple $3000 dollars than buy a Meta product again if I can help it.
I suspect this will be more like the Apple Watch. A product people liked but didn’t get at first and then over time it became the de-facto choice of smart watch.
But time will tell. I’m rooting for both the Vision Pro and the VR industry, myself, and I hope you are just like everyone I quoted you on every Apple product ever, just being foolish.
You are twisting my words, cherry-picking, making false equivalencies, and ignoring a ton of evidence, all while ignoring your own massive bias.
Sorry buddy, but you’re wrong to compare the Vision Pro to Apple’s other product launches of late. The only one I can think to compare it to is the Lisa.
How is it twisting your words? Your complaints do resemble the complaints seen during every other Apple product’s release I’ve experienced. I provided some references. They are almost verbatim.
And I literally had those opinions at the time.
And comparing it to the Apple Watch is pretty damned fair. The first year sales were way lower than expected for the watch:
But at the end of the day, have you even tried the thing? It’s an awesome fucking product, with tons of potential. Just like virtually every review has said.
Since you’re clearly not willing to listen to anyone but your own biased arguments, cherry-picked articles, and your own bias despite your own admitted lack of first-hand knowledge or experience, and you insist on making on fallacious argument after the next, this conversation is over since now you’re just sea lioning.
Hopefully, of the many things Apple learns from the Vision Pro Gen 1 is that building a massively over-engineered Rolls Royce MR face-computer is that they’ve finally hit a wall with both their bonkers product pricing scheme and their magical thinking about their internal product visions always seamlessly translating to widespread consumer reality. I mean, especially on the latter point, they’ve been falling flat for a few years, but mostly with smaller products and services, but now it’s happened with the launch of a major new product class— and it has failed spectacularly.
Don’t get me wrong: the Vision Pro is revolutionary wrt what it can become, but Apple released a product that was way too fucking expensive and which didn’t have the ecosystem of support functions to make it clear to everyone even what it’s for. It’s not an MR/AR/VR headset. It’s a FACE-COMPUTER which operates in MR only, and very few people can really wrap their heads around using a computer only that way, especially since even Apple hasn’t made it work that way very well or even made a case for why it should (outside of extreme edge cases)— yet.
This is future tech for a future when we’re ready for and need it. Right now, people just want an MR peripheral, not a whole ass FaceMac. And - for goddamn sure - nobody wants to pay for one.
Man, you’re spot on with that last phrase, at least, for me. All I want is a MR headset comfortable enough to wear all day, and to be able to manage virtual windows and/or monitors comfortably in front of me. The rest I genuinely don’t care about. I dream of the day I can replace my big monitor (or multi-monitor setup) with a lightweight pair of fancy goggles that would give me all the monitor real estate I would ever want.
It also has a number of core problems as a face computer.
As Casey Neistat’s review video showed: you can’t use the thing on transit or even walking down the street. Any open windows stay in the physical location you opened them.
Man, I better not have to walk home from the train station because I forgot I left my “PRIVATE STUFF - DO NOT OPEN” folder on couch.
The one I remember is he sat down on the subway, opened up a video, and the video stayed at the station when the train pulled away.
So you put it into travel mode and then they don’t do that…
I can see both setups being necessary… If im sitting in a chair, I don’t think I’d want my virtual monitors to be following my head while I move, I’d still want them to be roughly around my keyboard and mouse. But using it while walking, they absolutely should be floating around my head, keeping the main one at some fixed angle.
Generally speaking, Apple’s very good about “hitting the now” with new tech, but they really missed the mark with this one. This tech is just too far ahead of its time. This is a real General Magic moment.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
General Magic
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Exactly. Not only is it too expensive, but it doesn’t have a “universal” killer app or use case. What I mean by that is something a lot of people could use it for.
There are quite a few use cases for the device, but many of them are edge cases. For example I think the Keynote (Apple’s PowerPoint) virtual presentation mode is a great way to practice a presentation (you stand in a large room with the presentation behind you on a canvas and an audience in front of you), but how often are most people going to need it?
I personally loved the F1 demo one guy made with a 3D track map with the option to glimpse at onboards an whatnot. But how large of an audience would that have outside of hardcore F1 fans? Still, immersive live sports would probably be a thing, but without a large user base the broadcasters won’t bother making an elaborate (and costly) stream with added features exclusive to Vision Pro.
I’m not sure if Apple can fix this by “simply” releasing a second generation model, even if it somehow came at just half the price.
I can think of 100 use cases just for me. Maybe 500.More for other specialists in other industries. What I can’t do - even as a UX designer - is even imagine 100,000 use cases, which I can for… a phone or an iPod or and iPad. More even.
And Apple hasn’t engineered this device for those use cases. If they had, and marketed this device as such, we would be having a very different conversation.
But they didn’t.
And that’s a shame
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
And that’s a shame
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Meanwhile at Apple:
You’re factually wrong about several things in what you wrote but, more generally, I think you’re very wrong on what it is, what it can become, and why it should exist. You can’t say that it’s failed spectacularly unless you know what the goals and targets were so I think it’s silly to even try to make that point, much less without anything to support that kind of assertion.
Even the absolutes in which you speak are wrong. I paid for one and am happy I did. I plan to buy more of them as our usage expands and it will pay for itself before the end of the quarter. If it gets better than this with successive versions, that could be considered a major success. I think everyone can agree it’s a niche product right now but to say that nobody wants to pay for one and that it has failed is just nonsensical.
Strange— you say I’m wrong, yet you don’t say how or about what, nor do you offer explanation or evidence. Also, I never said it “failed” nor that it was a “failure”, but at least you acknowledge I said that it’s a niche product (which sorta contradicts the “failure” claim, doesn’t it?)
I’m glad you like yours, and I also look forward to future iterations.
You literally said “it failed spectacularly”. If you can’t even be honest about things that people can verify right above my comment, then there’s no point in responding further since you’re obviously not discussing this in good faith.
I said the launch failed, not the product itself. It’s not my fault that you don’t understand what you read.
Just going to leave this here:
https://bgr.com/general/original-iphone-reaction-comments/
I owned an original iPhone and saw its immediate potential as a revolutionary device. That thing got me laid more than once.
This is different.
Look, I see what this could become, but Apple hadn’t thought through some important parts of creating an entirely new computing UX. And the device’s expense and design are serious problems that devices like the iPhone didn’t have to overcome.
Everyone immediately knew how to use and integrate the iPhone into their lives, despite some very vocal critics and some valid complaints. The Vision Pro is a device that has no clear purpose, no “killer feature”, and whatever allure it may have is worn off by its outrageous and prohibitive price brought by the fact that’s it absurdly over-engineered.
As a result, it’s almost universally panned.
The iPhone launched without an App store. It later went on to define the concept of having a “killer app.”
It is clear from the article I linked that there were tons of people who didn’t know how the iPhone fit into their lives. That’s hugely revisionist history. All of the complaints about the VisionPro were made about the original iPhone. For instance:
People said it was too expensive! Here’s some more:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65619/13-early-criticisms-doubts-and-disses-about-iphone
I, personally, was a very late adopter to smart phones, joining when my motorola flip phone was stolen out of my hand during the iPhone 3g era. I later jumped to Android for the One Plus One, and stuck with that until jumping back to Apple devices years later.
But you could point to the Apple Watch, or the iPod, or any number of successful products that Apple has brought out and find the exact same things being said.
For example, Apple Watch will fail because:
https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/10-reasons-the-apple-watch-will-fail-ecfe7fdffebd
As for the VisionPro, all of the reviews I’ve seen for the device have been universally mixed-to-positive. They generally share your sentiment that it isn’t clear yet where it fits in, but that it is an incredible, magical, device.
The most negative review I’ve seen has said that it’s great but not worth messing up your hair to use.
But to claim it’s universally panned is absolutely not true.
It’s a great device that lots of people who can’t afford one are complaining about. That’s it so far.
You’re comparing apples and oranges here, while at the same time both overblowing the initial criticisms of the original iPhone while ignoring the amazement and praise it initially got compared to how little praise weighed against the (ok, near-) universal criticism the Vision Pro is getting.
It’s nowhere close. Not by galaxies.
You, yourself, admit you were “late to the smartphone game”— I was there, and I can tell you: pretty much everyone had iPhone mania. Stores couldn’t keep them on the shelves. They sold on eBay for outrageous markup. And while a few didn’t like them, most people adored them despite their quirks.
That’s just not the case with the Vision Pro.
I was late to buying an iPhone because it was a stupid, expensive, product that had no use in my life.
I was wrong.
And literally you are saying the same things that I quoted about the Apple Watch, and the same things were said about the iPad.
Not all three had the devices flying off the shelf in the first year.
But aside from that, I have a Vision Pro, and I love it.
It is better than all of the other VR headsets I have used, which is a relatively extensive list. I currently own the Index and PSVR2. And I would rather pay Apple $3000 dollars than buy a Meta product again if I can help it.
I suspect this will be more like the Apple Watch. A product people liked but didn’t get at first and then over time it became the de-facto choice of smart watch.
But time will tell. I’m rooting for both the Vision Pro and the VR industry, myself, and I hope you are just like everyone I quoted you on every Apple product ever, just being foolish.
You are twisting my words, cherry-picking, making false equivalencies, and ignoring a ton of evidence, all while ignoring your own massive bias.
Sorry buddy, but you’re wrong to compare the Vision Pro to Apple’s other product launches of late. The only one I can think to compare it to is the Lisa.
How is it twisting your words? Your complaints do resemble the complaints seen during every other Apple product’s release I’ve experienced. I provided some references. They are almost verbatim.
And I literally had those opinions at the time.
And comparing it to the Apple Watch is pretty damned fair. The first year sales were way lower than expected for the watch:
https://www.cultofmac.com/635432/apple-watch-first-year-sales-projections-were-outlandishly-unrealistic/
But at the end of the day, have you even tried the thing? It’s an awesome fucking product, with tons of potential. Just like virtually every review has said.
Since you’re clearly not willing to listen to anyone but your own biased arguments, cherry-picked articles, and your own bias despite your own admitted lack of first-hand knowledge or experience, and you insist on making on fallacious argument after the next, this conversation is over since now you’re just sea lioning.
Blocked.
Especially when 90% of the features etc can be done on a $200 quest 2 or a $600 quest 3.