Apple is not exactly downgrading the cheaper Vision Pros but there will be massive changes.
VR is a gimmick, it’s funny Apple waited so long and outpriced themselves.
A gimmick that is already in up to 10% of households, with a further 10% of those households using it more than 4 hours a day. Sure, it sounds like a small amount when put that way. But that’s already getting to be a pretty targettable market, and if you look at the growth chart, it’s not slowing down.
You may individually not have liked it, but it is indeed here to stay. I don’t think an apple headset will be worth it for a bit, but apple sold alot of Quest 3’s at the very least. So they sold people on the idea of VR, and then once they were in the door, they bought a reasonable headset. In that way, apple has helped alot. They helped to establish it as something that is “ready” for apple to take it seriously. That conveys alot of legitimacy to “normal” people.
I personally am, of course, in the minority of people that use VR for 8+ hours a day. It has replaced TV, Consoles, and gaming monitors for me. Plus I do my exercise in VR. I made a virtual 4k 120hz screen for my PC, that I use from the comfort of my recliner. It’s like if you had a steamdeck to stream your desktop to, except you don’t have to hold the weight of the deck, the screen is not near your hands, and also its 10 feet wide and at a comfortable viewing distance of 20 feet away, and is 4k 120hz. And you can use whichever controller you like holding. Also it’s cheaper. The downside is that if you want someone else to be able to see your game, you have to stream a video of it to their device, or a nearby TV. And speaking of a nearby TV, while playing on my Virtual screen, I can also just see my real TV too. On Quest 3, the passthrough video is clear enough to see about a 720p equivalent resolution at a comfortable viewing distance(40 degrees of your field of view). 720p may sound low, but it wasn’t that long ago that we were happy to see 540p (DvD quality) as a huge upgrade to what movies used to look like before. And Quest 4 will improve upon that too.
VR has only just crossed the first threshold into main stream adoption. The Quest 3 was the first headset that is worth it to non early adopters. They will only get better from here on. Not to mention they are also coming the other way, with AR stuff starting as light weight and unintrusive as possible and slowly building on what is possible to pack in without getting in the way at all. Step 2 of the AR sunglasses is coming soon.
While VR is the “console” of the future, AR is the “mobile phone” of the future. And eventually they will meet and blur the lines, kind of like how we use phones now. Modern smartphones are both what cellphones used to be, as well as surprisingly capable portable console gaming now.
personal VR I agree but AR is inevitable and already in play with camera phones but personal screens that are always avaialble is also invevitable once its light enough.
Normal Apple Vision headsets will be cheaper and lower-specced than their Apple Vision Pro headset. More at 11.
Apple will reportedly ditch the outside screen to make it more affordable for interested buyers, and instead of the $3,500 price, it would set it at around $1,500 to $2,000.
That’s still way too expensive for what it offers.
Maybe, but it’s close to the price of their other electronics, while still be pingble to claim it’s a premium product compared to other consumer goggles
Right, just checked their website and a maxed 15 pro max is 1600$ lol that’s a lot for what you get
It’s a marketing trick. First suggest an insanely high price. Customer rejects. Then suggest a lower price, but still expensive. The customer will be more inclined to buy, because the new lower price feels like a good deal in relation to the incredibly expensive old price.
If they went with the lower price right away, the customer wouldn’t be as inclined to buy because they don’t have the incredibly insane price as a reference point.
Valid point, but have you considered “Apple”?
Sure, it still won’t have genuine utility for everyday use, but it will have a rabid fandom who want to be cool to the point of justifying overpriced hardware with weak arguments that reduce to “because I just lile Apple.”
People said the same thing when the original Vision Pro came out. Aside from some rich people flexing that they own one, I haven’t heard anything about it after one week of release.
Sounds like a successful product launch, good enough to justify a second product in the line.
The rich flexing inspires desire. People don’t want a Lamborghini because it is the best car, they want a Lamborghini because they envy people who have one.
Go do the demo. It is honestly really impressive. Had no intention of doing it, I’m not the target demographic or audience, but I was there to get a battery replaced and while I waited they did it. My jaw dropped at least twice.
I’m at a loss for the kind of things it can do for me day-to-day right now (and yeah, they have to come up with good selling points there), but for a virtual desktop I’d be there if it were cheaper. But you kinda see where they’re heading - glasses where you could read the web, check weather, watch tv, or play games, the UI, and the phone is just a computing brick that sits in your pocket all day
The “aspirational brand” value is a bit of Apple-ception, though. The really, really, luxury-level wealthy people buying Vision Pro, to inspire the just really wealthy people to buy the Vision Basic or whatever it’s called. It still is the price of the highest-end iPhone, and it’s far less functional.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they treated the Vision Pro as Apple’s version of the beta product - top-down rather than bottom-up testing.
I don’t see any evidence that this product line is intended only for rich people. Things are generally more expensive in the early adopter stage, and Apple doesn’t make anything that they don’t want to see widely adopted.
The original iPod held 5GB and cost $400 ($700 in 2024 dollars).
The original iPhone came in a 4GB and an 8GB model that cost $500-600 ($700-800 in 2024).
The iPod is gone, replaced by the ubiquity of the iPhone that it evolved into. The cheapest iPhone today is the SE at $430 and it wildly outperforms the original hardware.
If you want an MP3 player with as close to the specs to the original iPod as you can find, you can get one for about $20, and it still outperforms the original iPod.
If the Apple Vision line is successful, I expect to see $20 generic VR headsets that blow everything we currently have out of the water by 2040.
I don’t want a Lamborghini, what does that mean?
Your calves are defined and your bank account can barely hold a comma?
Accurate.
It’s Apple.
Plenty if people will pay that and think it’s an amazing deal for cutting edge, futuristic, elegant technology that no other company is providing.
You mean buying the only actually functional ARM-based laptop built with a level of quality and support that I can expect to continue working with a bloat-free UNIX-based OS for the next decade before I switch it to Linux for probably a decade more? And it starts at $1,100?
What are those people thinking? It’s not even Copilot+ ready! /s
As far as really high end VR goes, that’s about what I’d expect
Am I remembering right that it is proprietary battery cable shit and doesn’t cooperate with anything but macOS? That will be a hard no from me even if they get it down in the hundreds.
