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The weird price fixation and doomerism here is weird. People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced,

by d3nj4l 3y ago

The weird price fixation and doomerism here is weird. People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it. $3500 is high but considering it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled into I'm pretty sure there's a more than sustainable market for it. That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price.

matsemann 3y ago
The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. Airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. That's what driving the sales. No one will be wearing this in public. And if anything, the person in the office using this first will look dorky. So I can't see it having the same appeal/free advertising.
- uw_rob 3y ago
  Do you own a pair of AirPods? My Gen2 AirPod Pros are what I consider to be the best purchase I have made in the last 10 years. The small package and ANC is fantastic. Before purchasing AirPods I would walk around with ATH M50X (Great headphones; not fashionable) and these have replaced that.
- elijaht 3y ago
  I don't know about that. My AirPods just work in a way that no other wireless headphones do with my iPhone. Using them is delightful. I still rock a Gen 1 pair which would no longer be "cool"
- pdabbadabba 3y ago
  > The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales. Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.) Not sure this tells us anything much about the Vision Pro, though--except, perhaps, that some people will happily use the product even if it looks dorky, if the user experience is on point.
  - matt-attack 3y ago
    Precisely. I prefer the AirPods Pro because they’re even smaller and are less visible. I use them because they’re mine blowingly convenient and nice. They’re one of those few products that really brings joy. I wear them constantly both on the go, and at home.
    - matsemann 3y ago
      But why did so many end up on exactly that model, when there are so many other brands? Because they're vastly superior, or because we're social animals and seeing lots of other people wearing them signals that they're a safe bet and will keep you in the in-group? My point here is that the visibility of them on others help drive the sales. "If so many wears them, they obviously can't be bad". For this headset, you will not get that same kind of influences from others.
      - pdabbadabba 3y ago
        I agree with the point that seeing people using AirPods serves as a sort of social endorsement of the product. (Which is fairly different from your original assertion that "The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement.") Though I think the much stronger endorsement comes from talking to people you know and trust. The problem with merely "ambient" signaling (as in, you see people wearing them on public transit, etc.) is that you don't know anything about the preferences of the people you see wearing them. I see (or at least used to see) lots of people wearing Beats too, but I only ever heard bad thing about them from people I know and trust and, therefore, never considered trying a pair. Vision Pro may not benefit from the latter (weaker) form of social endorsement, but it should be able to generate plenty of the former (stronger) kind.
- pdabbadabba 3y ago
  > The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales. Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know, FWIW. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.)
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  Ok.. please you probably can "build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
  - matsemann 3y ago
    How is the old dropbox dismissal relevant for my comment..? What I'm saying is that airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. This headset will not have that effect.
    - jbverschoor 3y ago
      Well, not the same, but people like to bash anything Apple. The Apple naysayers. usually they are heavy windows/linux users (there’s not much else) I bought the AirPods because I wanted exactly that. Sadly the batteries died in 1.5 years, so I’m boycotting the AirPods for now. Nobody I know bought AirPods because they look cool or because they want to show off they’re rich. AirPods are very affordable.. they just work really really well. Why is that so hard to believe? And yes, people are more aware of items which are visible.. but that’s a different story. WRT the vision pro, sure you won’t walk around outside with them, but if they work as advertised, they don’t have to. The M1 air didn’t sell a gazillion times because of its looks. In fact, you couldn’t tell it from the older models, so that point simply is not valid. People talk, people ask opinions, if the majority of the opinion from experience is positive yes it will result in more sales.
- deleted 3y ago
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jocaal 3y ago
i'm leaning more to the iphone side, theres not a chance apple is gonna allow webxr and have developers distribute products without apples cut.
atkailash 3y ago
Given you can use your mac’s screen on it, it’s almost moot depending on the app or latency involved. But knowing Apple it’ll probably be more iPhone since they’ve even been pushing App Store on Macs more too
mikenew 3y ago
I'm wondering that too, but from the presentation it looked a lot more "iPhone" than "mac". The only thing they demo'd that looked like a real desktop was an actual mac being mirrored in the display. Everything else seemed like an app you had to install through a new app store.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  in the "technology" section of the presentation where they talk about the operating system, the graphic explicitly shows ios not mac.
  - asimpletune 3y ago
    I think this is where the unification of Mac/iPhone/iPad has all been leading.
alaskamiller 3y ago
Emphasis on progressive web apps in macOS is a good hint with the first wave of apps this will have. Similar to how iPhone first didn't allow for third party apps, this will take the first year to sort out all the HCI before allowing for app store uploads. This is very much nReal but polished, and those goggles are dim and not as immersive as this. Magic Leap went with the wrong direction it turned out.
zamadatix 3y ago
I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory of "it costs more than many can afford to buy on a whim" instead of "it costs more than it should" of things like AirPods. Where the Pro Display XDR gets away with that is, at the end of the day, it's just a display for content the same as any other. Where the Vision Pro will need to do some fighting is traditional content is a much harder sell for a AR/VR device. I think Apple is trying their best to tackle that software problem head on trying to improve integrations and offer day 1 native options, which is what they always aim for, but it's still clearly going to have some penetration difficulty due to price and small target audience at first. Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory It's the same price as Microsoft's Hololens 2, but the tech looks much more impressive, and Microsoft seems to have laid off most of the Hololens development team.
  - ehsankia 3y ago
    And how many people have Hololens? Vs How many people have a Meta Quest 2? Again, the other things named above were just "Apple tax" expensive, i.e an extra 50% more. This is almost an order of magnitude more expensive. Doesn't Meta Quest go for around 400$, 350$ on sale? Literally a tenth of the price. I'm not saying they're the same product, it's hard to convince something to pay 10x for a product.
    - GeekyBear 3y ago
      How many times did Microsoft iterate on and improve the hardware before laying off the Hololens team and giving up? Once. The answer is once. Apple is a company that releases a new platform and keeps iterating on it for year after year. This version of Apple's hardware isn't intended to be the cheaper mass market consumer version of the tech. That will come later in what has been referred to as Apple Glass.
joking 3y ago
there's no doubt that with is onw appstore and os is more like the iphone and you will not be able to install anything that Apple has not approved, neither buy anything without Apple taking its cut
- orangecat 3y ago
  Yes, and that's really obnoxious. But the ability to use it as a display for your Mac (and presumably PC via VNC or similar) should mitigate that to some extent.
Oddskar 3y ago
> People said the M1 Pros were overpriced Yeah but most people aren't paying for those: their employers are. I don't think many employers are going to buy such an expensive tool.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  What? Millions of people have personal laptops that are M1+ Macbooks. For people who can afford it and aren't Linux people, why would you buy anything else? (well some people have issues with buying things from Apple and I don't blame them but Microsoft is busy making Windows as unappealing as possible so Apple wins for me)
  - Oddskar 3y ago
    Do you really need me to spell it out for you? * Can't afford it * Don't like MacOS * Don't like the hardware * Want a repairable device * Want a upgradeable device Etc, etc. Plenty of reasons.
    - the_mar 3y ago
      Who doesn’t like macos? Like it is objectively better than windows, and is able to actually work decently without set up pain (like linux) Who doesn’t like the hardware? Now that the butterfly keyboard and dongles are gone, what is there to hate? What is unrepairable about macbooks? It’s not an iphone, i ve replaced hard drives, fans and other components on a macbook countless times. Who really wants an upgradable laptop? I’d give you desktop perhaps, but with laptops i struggle to see the usecase The things you don’t actually mention, that certain software doesn’t run on mac (ironically used by mechies and industrial designers).
      - deleted 3y ago
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      - dboreham 3y ago
        Raising my hand because I detest macos.
lopkeny12ko 3y ago
There's a ton of hidden bias in this assessment. Have you considered that you either live in a wealthy area or are surrounded by people who are more prone to seeing having iDevices as a status symbol? Because > People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. Is absolutely not true in my experience. > People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. And how many of those laptops are corporate assets that were provided by their employer? How many of those professionals actually use Macs anywhere outside of work?
- m3kw9 3y ago
  AirPods are not a status product for most, the quality and the way it works is why it’s selling like hot cakes. It does show people you know about quality stuff by wearing one. The AirPod Max I would agree it is in the show off territory
- ethanbond 3y ago
  What’s the hidden bias? It’s a premium/borderline luxury brand and GP is saying “yes people do pay for premium/luxury goods.” Another great proof point is their annual revenue approaching $400B, selling devices that apparently no one can afford.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    The measure "I see it all the time" depends on both where you're looking, and whether you're paying attention. 1% of people have a PhD - but if you work at a university, you'll see people with a PhD all the time.
    - d3nj4l 3y ago
      Yes, but that also means that a statement like "nobody gets a PhD" is absolutely untrue.
      - cubefox 3y ago
justin66 3y ago
> People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it. The salient difference between those devices and this one is: none of those require software developers to do anything special to support them. Granted, Apple had some success in the past telling developers considering a Mac port of their software "these are not the droids you are looking for."
- shhsshs 3y ago
  In theory this does not require software developers (other than Apple's) to do anything special to support it either. visionOS has windows and kb/mouse support which means there is potentially no barrier to entry. I'm guessing "full-screen" or similar deep integrations with visionOS will require some custom code. But it seems like most sites + apps could potentially "just work".
  - justin66 3y ago
    I don't know what, if anything, will be the killer app that makes this thing take off. I know that it needs a killer app, and I highly doubt it will be a two-day port of a regular mac app.
- pathartl 3y ago
  There's a huge difference between the lifetime of a pair of headphones and a VR/AR headset (or at least there should be). Bluetooth will be around for a while. This the second generation Vision Pro is going to absolutely kill the first generation... so why even bother getting the first if it's at such a high price?
TigeriusKirk 3y ago
It's neither a phone nor a laptop. It can provide some of their functionality in limited situations, but it's considerably less flexible or portable than either.
whimsicalism 3y ago
You live in a wealthy area, I rarely see Airpods Max in San Francisco.
- parentheses 3y ago
  I think you probably see more than the national average. It's a fantastic pair of headphones if you're using them a lot. It's the only pair I've seen that had consumer grade features "normal users" care about while having pretty close to audiophile audio quality.
paxys 3y ago
AirPods are popular, sure, but I have quite literally never seen AirPods Max in the wild. People in the market for premium noise cancelling headsets are all buying Sony or Bose. And it isn't just about price. There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper, and they still haven't found product market fit. The problem isn't that they need more polish. With Meta winding down its reality investments Vision Pro is pretty much the last shot this entire sector has. If this device fails then we have no choice but to accept that VR/AR is at best a niche hobby, not the world-changing technology that we so desperately want it to be.
- drewbeck 3y ago
  Definitely going to be anecdotal here – around my neighborhood (brooklyn NY) I'm floored by how many Airpod Max's I see. It's by far the most common over-head wireless earphones I see.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Yes, but based on anecdata from that same sampling, you can also conclude everyone’s profession is podcast host and primary mode of transportation is by fixie bike.
    - drewbeck 3y ago
      Fixies haven’t been hot out here in 10 years (or more) but I get your point. However I was providing anecdata as a corrective to the parent comment, in order to suggest that such observations aren’t sufficient to build an argument on.
- throw74775 3y ago
  > There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper Can you list some of these far cheaper products that have the same feature set?
  - onepointsixC 3y ago
lm28469 3y ago
The weird thing to me is that people forget every failed Apple product and live in a bubble in which every new Apple toy is a hit. They had as many fails as success, we just forgot about them entierly
- ign0ramus 3y ago
  I realize that they have had many failures in their long history but it seems like they have been on a roll since the iPod release 22 years ago. Do you know of any product flop from Apple in the last two decades? I'm genuinely curious.
  - pathartl 3y ago
    - AirPower. That was straight-up cancelled. - The larger HomePod was pretty crap. - Butterfly switch failures - Apple Maps was garbage upon first release - Ping was 13 years ago, but it was one of those things that everyone knew was doomed to fail - The trashcan Mac Pro was not really made for professionals. I don't remember many selling.
    - ign0ramus 3y ago
      Thanks for replying! I hadn't heard of half of the items on this list which I think kind of proves GP's point.
      - Apocryphon 3y ago
        How quickly we forget the debacle of the Apple Maps launch, which forestalled the CEOship of Scott Forstall.
  - stirlo 3y ago
    Sales flops: iPod HiFi iPhone 5C HomePod And engineering failures: Trashcan Mac Pro Airpower There's not many but there are a few. I don't see this as one of them. The only thing thats an issue is the price. The tech looks streets ahead of everyone else. With time the price will come down and the features will grow like all Apple products.
deleted 3y ago
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captainbland 3y ago
Probably be a little wary on just doing a casual visual inspection. There's a wide range of airpod knockoffs at this point which are much cheaper but look almost identical at least at first glance.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
There's overpriced and then there's the next level above that of simply being unimaginably unaffordable. With the former well, its something for enthusiasts and something for regular people to save up for. With the latter it's dismissed as something for another class of people and out of sight and mind. Apple may have ventured into the latter category here. Not a great space to be if you want to build a platform and lure developers to build on it. Developers want to have a big market.
hyperbovine 3y ago
But there were already tons of people using earbuds, headphones, laptops, and monitors. They brought a high-end product to an already mature market. Whereas here, they are introducing a very expensive device into a segment, VR goggles, that has flopped over and over again with consumers everywhere. Apple might be able to pull off their magic, who knows, but it's way more dubious than with the other things you mentioned.
practice9 3y ago
> phone, laptop and massive display Including 3d video recording, which is under-appreciated in many of the threads. Two GoPro Hero cameras + rig would cost minimum $500, and you might have to edit photos and videos in post. And Apple does this automagically for you.
- stirlo 3y ago
  I'm not taking my $3500 headset with a massive screen on the exterior anywhere near where I'd be taking a GoPro.
ztrww 3y ago
> Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? I’m sure we all know the answer to this. > web engine that's not WebKit? rofl The AirPods, Pro Display XDR, even the iPhone were just improved and streamlined improvements of a established products with clear use cases. This is something completely different.. At this point this is just an expensive gimmick. That might change when people figure what they can do with it or it might not. > it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled And the iPad is a general purpose computer..
tqi 3y ago
Did people really say that the original Airpods were overpriced?[1] IIRC back in 2016 BT earbuds (that weren't connected by a band) were mostly pretty shitty, which I think was the root of most people's skepticism, not the price? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12446094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12446094
francisduvivier 3y ago
Since the space/weight for batteries is limited, I bet it will be more like iphone, so only WebKit and tight control to optimize battery usage.
acchow 3y ago
It also captures a new kind of content: spatial video. Upper middle class families with toddlers are going to want this. To relive the children's childhood forever.
paddim8 3y ago
Most people didn't say the M1 was overpriced. Most people said it was a good value for once. That's partly why it got so much attention. In this case, most people are saying this device is overpriced.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  I mean Apple hardly ever makes any budget price-to-performance stuff, the high end luxury overpriced market is more their thing. I'm not sure why people are surprised?
  - onepointsixC 3y ago
    Apple's largely been affordable luxury that 100's of millions buy. They're more akin to buying Starbucks over Dunk donuts. Their products usually would be in the price range of 1.3-1.5x more expensive than competitors but offering something which is uniquely good. This product is 3.5X more expensive than the next comparable device while missing key capabilities.
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      Well depends on what you compare. Smartphones and tablets tend to be on the more affordable side, but everything else not so much. Their monitor stand is about 8-12x the price of a top of the line competitor while still just being a hunk of metal.
      - onepointsixC 3y ago
        Relying on outliers for your argument isn't particularly compelling.
- CivBase 3y ago
  Yeah, I read/watched many M1 reviews when it first launched and the general sentiment was that M1 devices were an amazing value proposition for its market segment. Even the most staunch Apple critics admitted it was not just competitive; it blew the competition out of the water. The response to AirPods was more in line with OP's description, but I don't think the AVP is comparable. Everyone had a need for earbuds, there was relatively little competition in the wireless buds space at the time, $159 was within the realm of possibility for most consumers, and Apple's removal of the headphone jack forced many peoples' hands. The AVP doesn't have any of that going for it.
VerminOctopus1 3y ago
Do you honestly think the price fixation is “weird”? $3500 is insanely expensive for a consumer product - so expensive that it is flat out unobtainable for many Americans, and an extremely hard sell for many more.
- twoodfin 3y ago
  Adjusted for inflation, the PC revolution happened on the back of $5,000+ devices.
  - yCombLinks 3y ago
    PC's were a revolutionary device! There was absolutely no other way to do the things a PC allowed you to do at that time.
    - makapuf 3y ago
      And they were almost a pro only market at that price. Personal computers were c64, atari or amiga, personal pc arrived when they were much cheaper, mid 90
kmos17 3y ago
For comparison the original Macintosh was $2500 in 1984, equivalent to $7000 today. If this is as good as the demo was showing for pro applications it's revolutionary as a computing interface. Since you can use it to view your mac's screen it seems there are no app restriction per say, but the built in app I imagine will be like all other Apple walled garden apps only loaded via the app store.
MrStonedOne 3y ago
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Razengan 3y ago
The Vision Pro is a standalone device. A laptop + high-end headset would be in the same ballpark, at least maybe after deducting $500 or so for the Apple Tax.
rldjbpin 3y ago
this opinion seems more influenced by the writer's environment than not. i will be cautious to oversell its current use case. like it has been speculated by some youtubers, this might be more of a mvp like scenario like with apple watch in the best case scenario. although i am glad this is making quest 3 look more acceptable.
hn666 3y ago
I think what you're describing speaks more to Apple's marketing prowess than whether AirPods are overpriced or not.
sequoia 3y ago
> Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Snowball's chance in hell
heatmiser 3y ago
> That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price. This is where the product gives me pause. I am very happy to early-adopt this thing but if I cannot "do what I want" then I will pretty disappointed as I would not expect a comparable product to enter the market for another 5+ years as all this specialized hardware experiences commoditization. I am very happy using my Linux desktop, slightly less happy with my Linux laptop (fingers crossed the 15" Framework changes that" and am not kidding myself by holding any expectations for what the F/OSS A/VR future will look like in the near-to-mid-term.

by d3nj4l 3y ago

matsemann 3y ago

The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. Airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. That's what driving the sales. No one will be wearing this in public. And if anything, the person in the office using this first will look dorky. So I can't see it having the same appeal/free advertising.

uw_rob 3y ago
Do you own a pair of AirPods? My Gen2 AirPod Pros are what I consider to be the best purchase I have made in the last 10 years. The small package and ANC is fantastic. Before purchasing AirPods I would walk around with ATH M50X (Great headphones; not fashionable) and these have replaced that.
elijaht 3y ago
I don't know about that. My AirPods just work in a way that no other wireless headphones do with my iPhone. Using them is delightful. I still rock a Gen 1 pair which would no longer be "cool"
pdabbadabba 3y ago
> The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales. Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.) Not sure this tells us anything much about the Vision Pro, though--except, perhaps, that some people will happily use the product even if it looks dorky, if the user experience is on point.
- matt-attack 3y ago
  Precisely. I prefer the AirPods Pro because they’re even smaller and are less visible. I use them because they’re mine blowingly convenient and nice. They’re one of those few products that really brings joy. I wear them constantly both on the go, and at home.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    But why did so many end up on exactly that model, when there are so many other brands? Because they're vastly superior, or because we're social animals and seeing lots of other people wearing them signals that they're a safe bet and will keep you in the in-group? My point here is that the visibility of them on others help drive the sales. "If so many wears them, they obviously can't be bad". For this headset, you will not get that same kind of influences from others.
    - pdabbadabba 3y ago
      I agree with the point that seeing people using AirPods serves as a sort of social endorsement of the product. (Which is fairly different from your original assertion that "The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement.") Though I think the much stronger endorsement comes from talking to people you know and trust. The problem with merely "ambient" signaling (as in, you see people wearing them on public transit, etc.) is that you don't know anything about the preferences of the people you see wearing them. I see (or at least used to see) lots of people wearing Beats too, but I only ever heard bad thing about them from people I know and trust and, therefore, never considered trying a pair. Vision Pro may not benefit from the latter (weaker) form of social endorsement, but it should be able to generate plenty of the former (stronger) kind.
pdabbadabba 3y ago
> The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales. Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know, FWIW. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.)
jbverschoor 3y ago
Ok.. please you probably can "build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
- matsemann 3y ago
  How is the old dropbox dismissal relevant for my comment..? What I'm saying is that airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. This headset will not have that effect.
  - jbverschoor 3y ago
    Well, not the same, but people like to bash anything Apple. The Apple naysayers. usually they are heavy windows/linux users (there’s not much else) I bought the AirPods because I wanted exactly that. Sadly the batteries died in 1.5 years, so I’m boycotting the AirPods for now. Nobody I know bought AirPods because they look cool or because they want to show off they’re rich. AirPods are very affordable.. they just work really really well. Why is that so hard to believe? And yes, people are more aware of items which are visible.. but that’s a different story. WRT the vision pro, sure you won’t walk around outside with them, but if they work as advertised, they don’t have to. The M1 air didn’t sell a gazillion times because of its looks. In fact, you couldn’t tell it from the older models, so that point simply is not valid. People talk, people ask opinions, if the majority of the opinion from experience is positive yes it will result in more sales.
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jocaal 3y ago

i'm leaning more to the iphone side, theres not a chance apple is gonna allow webxr and have developers distribute products without apples cut.

atkailash 3y ago

Given you can use your mac’s screen on it, it’s almost moot depending on the app or latency involved. But knowing Apple it’ll probably be more iPhone since they’ve even been pushing App Store on Macs more too

mikenew 3y ago

I'm wondering that too, but from the presentation it looked a lot more "iPhone" than "mac". The only thing they demo'd that looked like a real desktop was an actual mac being mirrored in the display. Everything else seemed like an app you had to install through a new app store.

LegitShady 3y ago
in the "technology" section of the presentation where they talk about the operating system, the graphic explicitly shows ios not mac.
- asimpletune 3y ago
  I think this is where the unification of Mac/iPhone/iPad has all been leading.

alaskamiller 3y ago

Emphasis on progressive web apps in macOS is a good hint with the first wave of apps this will have. Similar to how iPhone first didn't allow for third party apps, this will take the first year to sort out all the HCI before allowing for app store uploads. This is very much nReal but polished, and those goggles are dim and not as immersive as this. Magic Leap went with the wrong direction it turned out.

zamadatix 3y ago

I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory of "it costs more than many can afford to buy on a whim" instead of "it costs more than it should" of things like AirPods. Where the Pro Display XDR gets away with that is, at the end of the day, it's just a display for content the same as any other. Where the Vision Pro will need to do some fighting is traditional content is a much harder sell for a AR/VR device. I think Apple is trying their best to tackle that software problem head on trying to improve integrations and offer day 1 native options, which is what they always aim for, but it's still clearly going to have some penetration difficulty due to price and small target audience at first. Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.

GeekyBear 3y ago
> I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory It's the same price as Microsoft's Hololens 2, but the tech looks much more impressive, and Microsoft seems to have laid off most of the Hololens development team.
- ehsankia 3y ago
  And how many people have Hololens? Vs How many people have a Meta Quest 2? Again, the other things named above were just "Apple tax" expensive, i.e an extra 50% more. This is almost an order of magnitude more expensive. Doesn't Meta Quest go for around 400$, 350$ on sale? Literally a tenth of the price. I'm not saying they're the same product, it's hard to convince something to pay 10x for a product.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    How many times did Microsoft iterate on and improve the hardware before laying off the Hololens team and giving up? Once. The answer is once. Apple is a company that releases a new platform and keeps iterating on it for year after year. This version of Apple's hardware isn't intended to be the cheaper mass market consumer version of the tech. That will come later in what has been referred to as Apple Glass.

joking 3y ago

there's no doubt that with is onw appstore and os is more like the iphone and you will not be able to install anything that Apple has not approved, neither buy anything without Apple taking its cut

orangecat 3y ago
Yes, and that's really obnoxious. But the ability to use it as a display for your Mac (and presumably PC via VNC or similar) should mitigate that to some extent.

Oddskar 3y ago

> People said the M1 Pros were overpriced Yeah but most people aren't paying for those: their employers are. I don't think many employers are going to buy such an expensive tool.

ajkjk 3y ago
What? Millions of people have personal laptops that are M1+ Macbooks. For people who can afford it and aren't Linux people, why would you buy anything else? (well some people have issues with buying things from Apple and I don't blame them but Microsoft is busy making Windows as unappealing as possible so Apple wins for me)
- Oddskar 3y ago
  Do you really need me to spell it out for you? * Can't afford it * Don't like MacOS * Don't like the hardware * Want a repairable device * Want a upgradeable device Etc, etc. Plenty of reasons.
  - the_mar 3y ago
    Who doesn’t like macos? Like it is objectively better than windows, and is able to actually work decently without set up pain (like linux) Who doesn’t like the hardware? Now that the butterfly keyboard and dongles are gone, what is there to hate? What is unrepairable about macbooks? It’s not an iphone, i ve replaced hard drives, fans and other components on a macbook countless times. Who really wants an upgradable laptop? I’d give you desktop perhaps, but with laptops i struggle to see the usecase The things you don’t actually mention, that certain software doesn’t run on mac (ironically used by mechies and industrial designers).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - dboreham 3y ago
      Raising my hand because I detest macos.

lopkeny12ko 3y ago

There's a ton of hidden bias in this assessment. Have you considered that you either live in a wealthy area or are surrounded by people who are more prone to seeing having iDevices as a status symbol? Because > People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. Is absolutely not true in my experience. > People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. And how many of those laptops are corporate assets that were provided by their employer? How many of those professionals actually use Macs anywhere outside of work?

m3kw9 3y ago
AirPods are not a status product for most, the quality and the way it works is why it’s selling like hot cakes. It does show people you know about quality stuff by wearing one. The AirPod Max I would agree it is in the show off territory
ethanbond 3y ago
What’s the hidden bias? It’s a premium/borderline luxury brand and GP is saying “yes people do pay for premium/luxury goods.” Another great proof point is their annual revenue approaching $400B, selling devices that apparently no one can afford.
- michaelt 3y ago
  The measure "I see it all the time" depends on both where you're looking, and whether you're paying attention. 1% of people have a PhD - but if you work at a university, you'll see people with a PhD all the time.
  - d3nj4l 3y ago
    Yes, but that also means that a statement like "nobody gets a PhD" is absolutely untrue.
    - cubefox 3y ago

justin66 3y ago

> People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it. The salient difference between those devices and this one is: none of those require software developers to do anything special to support them. Granted, Apple had some success in the past telling developers considering a Mac port of their software "these are not the droids you are looking for."

shhsshs 3y ago
In theory this does not require software developers (other than Apple's) to do anything special to support it either. visionOS has windows and kb/mouse support which means there is potentially no barrier to entry. I'm guessing "full-screen" or similar deep integrations with visionOS will require some custom code. But it seems like most sites + apps could potentially "just work".
- justin66 3y ago
  I don't know what, if anything, will be the killer app that makes this thing take off. I know that it needs a killer app, and I highly doubt it will be a two-day port of a regular mac app.
pathartl 3y ago
There's a huge difference between the lifetime of a pair of headphones and a VR/AR headset (or at least there should be). Bluetooth will be around for a while. This the second generation Vision Pro is going to absolutely kill the first generation... so why even bother getting the first if it's at such a high price?

TigeriusKirk 3y ago

It's neither a phone nor a laptop. It can provide some of their functionality in limited situations, but it's considerably less flexible or portable than either.

whimsicalism 3y ago

You live in a wealthy area, I rarely see Airpods Max in San Francisco.

parentheses 3y ago
I think you probably see more than the national average. It's a fantastic pair of headphones if you're using them a lot. It's the only pair I've seen that had consumer grade features "normal users" care about while having pretty close to audiophile audio quality.

paxys 3y ago

AirPods are popular, sure, but I have quite literally never seen AirPods Max in the wild. People in the market for premium noise cancelling headsets are all buying Sony or Bose. And it isn't just about price. There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper, and they still haven't found product market fit. The problem isn't that they need more polish. With Meta winding down its reality investments Vision Pro is pretty much the last shot this entire sector has. If this device fails then we have no choice but to accept that VR/AR is at best a niche hobby, not the world-changing technology that we so desperately want it to be.

drewbeck 3y ago
Definitely going to be anecdotal here – around my neighborhood (brooklyn NY) I'm floored by how many Airpod Max's I see. It's by far the most common over-head wireless earphones I see.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Yes, but based on anecdata from that same sampling, you can also conclude everyone’s profession is podcast host and primary mode of transportation is by fixie bike.
  - drewbeck 3y ago
    Fixies haven’t been hot out here in 10 years (or more) but I get your point. However I was providing anecdata as a corrective to the parent comment, in order to suggest that such observations aren’t sufficient to build an argument on.
throw74775 3y ago
> There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper Can you list some of these far cheaper products that have the same feature set?
- onepointsixC 3y ago

lm28469 3y ago

The weird thing to me is that people forget every failed Apple product and live in a bubble in which every new Apple toy is a hit. They had as many fails as success, we just forgot about them entierly

ign0ramus 3y ago
I realize that they have had many failures in their long history but it seems like they have been on a roll since the iPod release 22 years ago. Do you know of any product flop from Apple in the last two decades? I'm genuinely curious.
- pathartl 3y ago
  - AirPower. That was straight-up cancelled. - The larger HomePod was pretty crap. - Butterfly switch failures - Apple Maps was garbage upon first release - Ping was 13 years ago, but it was one of those things that everyone knew was doomed to fail - The trashcan Mac Pro was not really made for professionals. I don't remember many selling.
  - ign0ramus 3y ago
    Thanks for replying! I hadn't heard of half of the items on this list which I think kind of proves GP's point.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      How quickly we forget the debacle of the Apple Maps launch, which forestalled the CEOship of Scott Forstall.
- stirlo 3y ago
  Sales flops: iPod HiFi iPhone 5C HomePod And engineering failures: Trashcan Mac Pro Airpower There's not many but there are a few. I don't see this as one of them. The only thing thats an issue is the price. The tech looks streets ahead of everyone else. With time the price will come down and the features will grow like all Apple products.

deleted 3y ago

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captainbland 3y ago

Probably be a little wary on just doing a casual visual inspection. There's a wide range of airpod knockoffs at this point which are much cheaper but look almost identical at least at first glance.

Tiktaalik 3y ago

There's overpriced and then there's the next level above that of simply being unimaginably unaffordable. With the former well, its something for enthusiasts and something for regular people to save up for. With the latter it's dismissed as something for another class of people and out of sight and mind. Apple may have ventured into the latter category here. Not a great space to be if you want to build a platform and lure developers to build on it. Developers want to have a big market.

hyperbovine 3y ago

But there were already tons of people using earbuds, headphones, laptops, and monitors. They brought a high-end product to an already mature market. Whereas here, they are introducing a very expensive device into a segment, VR goggles, that has flopped over and over again with consumers everywhere. Apple might be able to pull off their magic, who knows, but it's way more dubious than with the other things you mentioned.

practice9 3y ago

> phone, laptop and massive display Including 3d video recording, which is under-appreciated in many of the threads. Two GoPro Hero cameras + rig would cost minimum $500, and you might have to edit photos and videos in post. And Apple does this automagically for you.

stirlo 3y ago
I'm not taking my $3500 headset with a massive screen on the exterior anywhere near where I'd be taking a GoPro.

ztrww 3y ago

> Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? I’m sure we all know the answer to this. > web engine that's not WebKit? rofl The AirPods, Pro Display XDR, even the iPhone were just improved and streamlined improvements of a established products with clear use cases. This is something completely different.. At this point this is just an expensive gimmick. That might change when people figure what they can do with it or it might not. > it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled And the iPad is a general purpose computer..

tqi 3y ago

Did people really say that the original Airpods were overpriced?[1] IIRC back in 2016 BT earbuds (that weren't connected by a band) were mostly pretty shitty, which I think was the root of most people's skepticism, not the price? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12446094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12446094

francisduvivier 3y ago

Since the space/weight for batteries is limited, I bet it will be more like iphone, so only WebKit and tight control to optimize battery usage.

acchow 3y ago

It also captures a new kind of content: spatial video. Upper middle class families with toddlers are going to want this. To relive the children's childhood forever.

paddim8 3y ago

Most people didn't say the M1 was overpriced. Most people said it was a good value for once. That's partly why it got so much attention. In this case, most people are saying this device is overpriced.

moffkalast 3y ago
I mean Apple hardly ever makes any budget price-to-performance stuff, the high end luxury overpriced market is more their thing. I'm not sure why people are surprised?
- onepointsixC 3y ago
  Apple's largely been affordable luxury that 100's of millions buy. They're more akin to buying Starbucks over Dunk donuts. Their products usually would be in the price range of 1.3-1.5x more expensive than competitors but offering something which is uniquely good. This product is 3.5X more expensive than the next comparable device while missing key capabilities.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Well depends on what you compare. Smartphones and tablets tend to be on the more affordable side, but everything else not so much. Their monitor stand is about 8-12x the price of a top of the line competitor while still just being a hunk of metal.
    - onepointsixC 3y ago
      Relying on outliers for your argument isn't particularly compelling.
CivBase 3y ago
Yeah, I read/watched many M1 reviews when it first launched and the general sentiment was that M1 devices were an amazing value proposition for its market segment. Even the most staunch Apple critics admitted it was not just competitive; it blew the competition out of the water. The response to AirPods was more in line with OP's description, but I don't think the AVP is comparable. Everyone had a need for earbuds, there was relatively little competition in the wireless buds space at the time, $159 was within the realm of possibility for most consumers, and Apple's removal of the headphone jack forced many peoples' hands. The AVP doesn't have any of that going for it.

VerminOctopus1 3y ago

Do you honestly think the price fixation is “weird”? $3500 is insanely expensive for a consumer product - so expensive that it is flat out unobtainable for many Americans, and an extremely hard sell for many more.

twoodfin 3y ago
Adjusted for inflation, the PC revolution happened on the back of $5,000+ devices.
- yCombLinks 3y ago
  PC's were a revolutionary device! There was absolutely no other way to do the things a PC allowed you to do at that time.
  - makapuf 3y ago
    And they were almost a pro only market at that price. Personal computers were c64, atari or amiga, personal pc arrived when they were much cheaper, mid 90

kmos17 3y ago

For comparison the original Macintosh was $2500 in 1984, equivalent to $7000 today. If this is as good as the demo was showing for pro applications it's revolutionary as a computing interface. Since you can use it to view your mac's screen it seems there are no app restriction per say, but the built in app I imagine will be like all other Apple walled garden apps only loaded via the app store.

MrStonedOne 3y ago

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Razengan 3y ago

The Vision Pro is a standalone device. A laptop + high-end headset would be in the same ballpark, at least maybe after deducting $500 or so for the Apple Tax.

rldjbpin 3y ago

this opinion seems more influenced by the writer's environment than not. i will be cautious to oversell its current use case. like it has been speculated by some youtubers, this might be more of a mvp like scenario like with apple watch in the best case scenario. although i am glad this is making quest 3 look more acceptable.

hn666 3y ago

I think what you're describing speaks more to Apple's marketing prowess than whether AirPods are overpriced or not.

sequoia 3y ago

> Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Snowball's chance in hell

heatmiser 3y ago

> That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price. This is where the product gives me pause. I am very happy to early-adopt this thing but if I cannot "do what I want" then I will pretty disappointed as I would not expect a comparable product to enter the market for another 5+ years as all this specialized hardware experiences commoditization. I am very happy using my Linux desktop, slightly less happy with my Linux laptop (fingers crossed the 15" Framework changes that" and am not kidding myself by holding any expectations for what the F/OSS A/VR future will look like in the near-to-mid-term.