Apple

Agreed! I think there's also genuine uncertainty about what uses will be popular, much like the early Apple Watch iterations involved some amount of flailing to figure out what works.

The spare-no-expense approach can be seen as an effort to not close off avenues of exploration before they know what works. When optimizing for cost, decisions will be made to save money at the expense of ruling out some potential appeal, but right now nobody knows what will have appeal. The EyeSight feature seems like a prime example of something that very few would include in a product today because the appeal is uncertain while the cost is high. It might turn out to be a home run of a feature, and this luxury version of the Apple Vision product is how they can gain experience with it. If the response is instead that it looks like googly eyes, makes people uncomfortable, or doesn't achieve the goal of letting people use Vision while in the presence of others, then maybe it would find itself on the chopping block to get costs down.

I believe that the extension „pro“ hints at a cheaper version being in the making, as well. Maybe that need some time and next year things get clearer 🤷‍♂️

It has an m2 chip, just like you can run iphone/ipad apps on a mac you'll be able to run them on VisionOS. Yeah there won't be many native apps but it's still usable at that stage. I'd be cool to scroll lemmy in a holographic interface that sits on your table.

I think that's been pretty obvious form the start. It was clearly priced at a premium upon being announced, and their initial production was cut from ~1mil units to just south of 400k. They know they won't have many buyers for this first gen product and are pricing/producing as such.

To me it’s by far the most “Gen-1” product Apple has shown in a long time. I saw someone say that it feels like they wanted to make AR glasses but the tech wasn’t ready yet, and I have to agree. I do hope it will succeed, but I’ll need to see the next few iterations to be really sold on it.

My current theory is that it is priced the way it is because they don't have the supply chain to currently manufacture en-masse. I think it will be sold out at launch and continue to be sold out for a long time.

I'm comparing this with the transition from iphone to apple watch (in terms of tech and size). It took countless iterations on both iphone and watch to arrive at the apple watch ultra which effectively can be an iphone replacement. based on the current industry iterations, I'd guess that we'll see a really great product in 3-4 years which is based on this tech just much smaller.

as an ex-mobile dev myself I can say that in my opinion the interface and controls are really interesting already and will allow for a yet not available immersive experience. for example I'm using an wireless VR headset to play halflife alyx and even though that tech is relatively dated, the hand and head tracking is superb; making the experience absolutely amazing. if you've not tried it, I highly recommend it, it's been eye opening for me. any dev that wants to stay relevant has to buy this device and learning how to properly develop for it will likely take 3-4 years as well just to see what people will engage with.

another point that hasn't been mentioned is privacy, you get to watch your personal movies / recordings / meetings / documents without anyone around you seeing it. this is huge for travelers. just like the ability to have a huge screen with you without having to actually carry a screen.

I think the whole point of having the headset priced in this range was to make sure that the experience really is very good. I'm sure thet they could've made this juuuust a little worse and therefore a bit cheaper (e.g., leave out the eye display to the outside, use one or two cameras less etc).

But then, everyone using it would probably be like "meh, this is nothing special, maybe AR isn't there yet" and abandon the idea. I think the first impression really matters here.

In the end, it's a feedback loop: If noone develops apps for this, there are no apps and nobody wants to use it. If nobody uses it, nobody wants to develop for it.

I do think they’ll eventually sell a trimmed down Apple Vision if only because they’re launching with just Apple Vision Pro, but I don’t think the reasoning is that complicated.

Apple is not known for dead products or ecosystems, so there’s confidence in its success; developers will be on board. It was the same thing for the iPad, and it was the same thing for the Apple Watch.

The high price is just a reflection of the three compounding factors: it’s AR/VR, it’s Apple, and it’s the Pro version. So it was always going to be expensive.

I'm sure developers can't wait to waste 3.5k and crazy amount of time and effort on a device that has no audience

It's the Hololens all over again and I legitimate don't understand why the internet is so obsessed with this. If the Meta Quest 2 can't break into the market at $400, this sure as hell won't. Everything they showed of the Apple headset is a gimmick. Watch a blurrier version of your TV on a 2 hour battery! Capture videos by wearing a bulky headset that's not very portable! Use apps that already exist on your phone in a clunkier way!

Am I missing something? It looks like good tech but I agree with OP, there's no market for this.

I have a hard time picturing VR becoming mainstream when the headsets are still heavy. It's cool that the Vision Pro is so high quality and has such great visual fidelity, but at the end of the day, people don't want to watch movies with something heavy strapped on their face. It's a worse experience than just using a regular TV.