9 ms·

At USD$3500, who is it for? And who will develop software for something with such a small user base?

GeekyBear 3y ago
It's priced just like Microsoft's Hololens and aimed at the same target audience that the first version of Hololens was: developers and early adopters. The cheaper mass market consumer version comes later. They've been iterating for years now on something in a thick framed glasses form factor, and haven't gotten anything they think is worth shipping so far. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  But HoloLens has pretty much entirely abandoned the consumer market and is now targeting the lucrative segment of professional usage where there is obvious gain to me made using AR, a segment Apple has always been mostly uninterested in.
  - throwanma 3y ago
    Just like windows phone vs iphone?
    - GeekyBear 3y ago
      It always struck me as insane that Microsoft tried to target Windows Phone at general consumers and not Enterprise users.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    Hololens 2 attempted to target factory workers, but given that Microsoft has laid off the Hololens team, it looks like they have given up. >Microsoft’s HoloLens 2: a $3,500 mixed reality headset for the factory, not the living room https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/24/18235460/microsoft-hololens-2-price-specs-mixed-reality-ar-vr-business-work-features-mwc-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/24/18235460/microsoft-holole... > Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-has-laid-off-entire-teams-behind-virtual-mixed-reality-and-hololens https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-has-laid-... I'm sure Apple's habit of iterating on and improving a new platform year after year without giving up would have served them better.
MacsHeadroom 3y ago
> At USD$3500, who is it for? Everyone. It's a laptop replacement. Realistically this "Pro" version is for early adopters. There will surely be a regular/SE/Lite version in a couple of years for the price of a MacBook Air. > And who will develop software for something with such a small user base? Everyone will, if they're smart. Being first to market on a new platform is huge, even if it will take a few years to have significant market penetration. Angry Birds became a multi-billion dollar franchise for being one of the first iPhone games. Who knows what the equivalent will be for XR.
- dotcoma 3y ago
  Yeah, first-mover advantage. Heard that before…
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  >Everyone. It's a laptop replacement. Respectfully, even the iPad hasn't fully evolved into a laptop replacement, so why should we think this device will fit all the multitude of use cases that necessitate the computing power represented by a laptop / desktop device?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - theaussiestew 3y ago
    It's because it has a M2 and can be used as a monitor for an ordinary MacBook
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      Is it really a laptop replacement if it requires a laptop to do that?
    - oarsinsync 3y ago
      The current iPad Pro has an M1 and can be used as a monitor for an ordinary MacBook. I suspect the iPad Pro refresh due this year will have an M2.
carabiner 3y ago
I mean who would pay $600 for a cell phone?
- esafak 3y ago
  For the young ones in the audience, here's the visionary CEO who said it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
- aidenn0 3y ago
  The $600 price was with AT&T subsidies; some phones were free, or nearly free, when carrier subsidized. The Palm Centro was a contemporary smartphone you could get for under $200 with Sprint subsidies.
threeseed 3y ago
It is targeted at developers and companies who want to build apps. But there will of course be a huge contingent of early adopters. The reason it is priced at $3500 is because Apple does not have the supply chain to build more of these things. There is simply no point pricing this at $300 and being perpetually Out of Stock which would devalue their brand for no benefit. Hence the Pro tag and release at WWDC. Eventually there will be a non-Pro version that everyone can buy.
inconceivable 3y ago
is it really this difficult to project 3-5 years into the future where this thing is cheaper, more powerful, and has an app library ... because all of the actual pros bought the launch model to develop software for it in 2024? then give it a 24-36 app dev cycle and you're going to hit the adoption curve. in about 5 years. this is literally how every single thing has worked in this industry for like 50 years now. are there really people on this site so young that they don't remember how this works beyond a single product hype cycle? is it that hard to remember how compact discs, dial-up internet, laptops, multi-CPU/cores, DVDs, mp3 players, broadband, smartphones, bluetooth, wifi, flash, SSDs, GPUs, plasma, lcd, led, smartwatches, EVs took 5-10 years to hit mass market? "well, that's different, those were obviously going to be hits" -- no. wrong. all of this stuff was atrocious and atrociously expensive when it first came out. anyone remember the first orinoco wifi cards? or bluetooth? the shit didn't even work. here are some current things that sort of suck but will probably also continue get better: satellite internet, smart home tech, solar tech, LLMs. this stuff will get better. it's the housing, education, healthcare, financial services that are going to get worse and worse because all of the money flows to the people making the tech. talk about missing the forest for the trees. i mean is it REALLY that hard to remember this stuff? am i REALLY that old? am i taking crazy pills?
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  Professional don’t buy new technology out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because there is a market to address generally business users. Yet Apple seems to be mostly positioning the Vision as an entertainment centred device targeting a large market. At this price point, it is quite surprising. I think significant questions remain at this point about their actual go-to-market strategy (unsurprisingly considering they have only been given a short keynote presentation) which make people suspicious if not sceptical when you take into account the other notorious failures in this market.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    It is best to think of this as a glorified dev-kit. Developers are not going to be the primary demographic, this isn't going to be the final price and the product will definitely change over the coming year.
veidr 3y ago
Well, I've paid something like $200/year for a fitness app in VR. So I can easily imagine a small number of rich Apple users paying $500/year. If you can get a few thousand users paying $500/year, pretty soon you're talking about decent money. But so far, that is the only app category I can think of that would justify me quitting my job and trying to bootstrap a business based solely on an app for Vision OS. I feel like I am probably overlooking a couple, though... :-D
jjtheblunt 3y ago
Surgeons with DaVinci surgical robots?
- p_l 3y ago
  You're not going to use consumer VR/AR for that, but carefully paired setup to ensure predictable latencies etc.
stocknoob 3y ago
Who will develop software for wealthy users willing to spend money on new experiences?
pantulis 3y ago
> At USD$3500, who is it for? I thought it would be absurd to be wearing these goggles in the street. Then I thought that at home it would also be strange being with the family with those things on the top of your head. I thought "This is perfect for people who live alone". And then it dawned on me: the killer app for this is p0rn.
- akmarinov 3y ago
  p0rn has always been the driving force behind most tech - VHS, DVDs, HDTV, 3D, etc
  - pantulis 3y ago
    Nginx...
thinkingemote 3y ago
there is a huge amount of comfortable people who are bought into the whole Apple ecosystem. Everything they use is Apple, it all looks, is built and works together very well and they have spent multiple amounts over the years than what this costs on its own. Cost is not important for them. Even monitor stands can never be classed as expensive. Brand loyalty, consumerism, platform lock in. It's the reason why Apple is so wealthy. People will defend the investment of their time and money by investing more.
- kaba0 3y ago
  It’s part but I think you disregard many of its “pro” userbase that prefers the often best-in-class hardware with okay software, which is much more privacy oriented than the alternative. At least on the phone market, iphones have much longer lifetime and can often be used second-third time as well (I also use a used iphone, which I plan on passing down to my mother when I upgrade). Their M-series laptops are unbiasedly the best and it is not even funny by how far. There is simply no competitor that would be anywhere near on the performance-battery life plot, and for that its price is really not high (especially an M1 air, used or new). Android’s wearables are toys compared to an apple watch also.
sebzim4500 3y ago
Sure, there won't be that many users but the ones that exist will be very willing to spend money. Like the early days of the appstore.
andrewstuart 3y ago
To be clear, for Apple, I would consider the Apple Watch a flop. Sure the product exists and people buy them, but it's no earth shaker - in contrast, a success for Apple is iPad, iPhone, Macintosh - products that if you ask some random person in an affluent country, there's a pretty good chance they own one, two three or more of these products. The Apple VR headset will not be a flop in the sense that Apple probably won't kill the product, but it also won't be any huge success by the measures above. It will at best be a niche, which is a flop for Apple.

It's priced just like Microsoft's Hololens and aimed at the same target audience that the first version of Hololens was: developers and early adopters. The cheaper mass market consumer version comes later. They've been iterating for years now on something in a thick framed glasses form factor, and haven't gotten anything they think is worth shipping so far. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses

WastingMyTime89 3y ago
But HoloLens has pretty much entirely abandoned the consumer market and is now targeting the lucrative segment of professional usage where there is obvious gain to me made using AR, a segment Apple has always been mostly uninterested in.
- throwanma 3y ago
  Just like windows phone vs iphone?
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    It always struck me as insane that Microsoft tried to target Windows Phone at general consumers and not Enterprise users.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  Hololens 2 attempted to target factory workers, but given that Microsoft has laid off the Hololens team, it looks like they have given up. >Microsoft’s HoloLens 2: a $3,500 mixed reality headset for the factory, not the living room https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/24/18235460/microsoft-hololens-2-price-specs-mixed-reality-ar-vr-business-work-features-mwc-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/24/18235460/microsoft-holole... > Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-has-laid-off-entire-teams-behind-virtual-mixed-reality-and-hololens https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-has-laid-... I'm sure Apple's habit of iterating on and improving a new platform year after year without giving up would have served them better.

MacsHeadroom 3y ago

> At USD$3500, who is it for? Everyone. It's a laptop replacement. Realistically this "Pro" version is for early adopters. There will surely be a regular/SE/Lite version in a couple of years for the price of a MacBook Air. > And who will develop software for something with such a small user base? Everyone will, if they're smart. Being first to market on a new platform is huge, even if it will take a few years to have significant market penetration. Angry Birds became a multi-billion dollar franchise for being one of the first iPhone games. Who knows what the equivalent will be for XR.

dotcoma 3y ago
Yeah, first-mover advantage. Heard that before…
poulsbohemian 3y ago
>Everyone. It's a laptop replacement. Respectfully, even the iPad hasn't fully evolved into a laptop replacement, so why should we think this device will fit all the multitude of use cases that necessitate the computing power represented by a laptop / desktop device?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- theaussiestew 3y ago
  It's because it has a M2 and can be used as a monitor for an ordinary MacBook
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    Is it really a laptop replacement if it requires a laptop to do that?
  - oarsinsync 3y ago
    The current iPad Pro has an M1 and can be used as a monitor for an ordinary MacBook. I suspect the iPad Pro refresh due this year will have an M2.

carabiner 3y ago

I mean who would pay $600 for a cell phone?

esafak 3y ago
For the young ones in the audience, here's the visionary CEO who said it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
aidenn0 3y ago
The $600 price was with AT&T subsidies; some phones were free, or nearly free, when carrier subsidized. The Palm Centro was a contemporary smartphone you could get for under $200 with Sprint subsidies.

threeseed 3y ago

It is targeted at developers and companies who want to build apps. But there will of course be a huge contingent of early adopters. The reason it is priced at $3500 is because Apple does not have the supply chain to build more of these things. There is simply no point pricing this at $300 and being perpetually Out of Stock which would devalue their brand for no benefit. Hence the Pro tag and release at WWDC. Eventually there will be a non-Pro version that everyone can buy.

inconceivable 3y ago

is it really this difficult to project 3-5 years into the future where this thing is cheaper, more powerful, and has an app library ... because all of the actual pros bought the launch model to develop software for it in 2024? then give it a 24-36 app dev cycle and you're going to hit the adoption curve. in about 5 years. this is literally how every single thing has worked in this industry for like 50 years now. are there really people on this site so young that they don't remember how this works beyond a single product hype cycle? is it that hard to remember how compact discs, dial-up internet, laptops, multi-CPU/cores, DVDs, mp3 players, broadband, smartphones, bluetooth, wifi, flash, SSDs, GPUs, plasma, lcd, led, smartwatches, EVs took 5-10 years to hit mass market? "well, that's different, those were obviously going to be hits" -- no. wrong. all of this stuff was atrocious and atrociously expensive when it first came out. anyone remember the first orinoco wifi cards? or bluetooth? the shit didn't even work. here are some current things that sort of suck but will probably also continue get better: satellite internet, smart home tech, solar tech, LLMs. this stuff will get better. it's the housing, education, healthcare, financial services that are going to get worse and worse because all of the money flows to the people making the tech. talk about missing the forest for the trees. i mean is it REALLY that hard to remember this stuff? am i REALLY that old? am i taking crazy pills?

WastingMyTime89 3y ago
Professional don’t buy new technology out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because there is a market to address generally business users. Yet Apple seems to be mostly positioning the Vision as an entertainment centred device targeting a large market. At this price point, it is quite surprising. I think significant questions remain at this point about their actual go-to-market strategy (unsurprisingly considering they have only been given a short keynote presentation) which make people suspicious if not sceptical when you take into account the other notorious failures in this market.
- threeseed 3y ago
  It is best to think of this as a glorified dev-kit. Developers are not going to be the primary demographic, this isn't going to be the final price and the product will definitely change over the coming year.

veidr 3y ago

Well, I've paid something like $200/year for a fitness app in VR. So I can easily imagine a small number of rich Apple users paying $500/year. If you can get a few thousand users paying $500/year, pretty soon you're talking about decent money. But so far, that is the only app category I can think of that would justify me quitting my job and trying to bootstrap a business based solely on an app for Vision OS. I feel like I am probably overlooking a couple, though... :-D

jjtheblunt 3y ago

Surgeons with DaVinci surgical robots?

p_l 3y ago
You're not going to use consumer VR/AR for that, but carefully paired setup to ensure predictable latencies etc.

stocknoob 3y ago

Who will develop software for wealthy users willing to spend money on new experiences?

pantulis 3y ago

> At USD$3500, who is it for? I thought it would be absurd to be wearing these goggles in the street. Then I thought that at home it would also be strange being with the family with those things on the top of your head. I thought "This is perfect for people who live alone". And then it dawned on me: the killer app for this is p0rn.

akmarinov 3y ago
p0rn has always been the driving force behind most tech - VHS, DVDs, HDTV, 3D, etc
- pantulis 3y ago
  Nginx...

thinkingemote 3y ago

there is a huge amount of comfortable people who are bought into the whole Apple ecosystem. Everything they use is Apple, it all looks, is built and works together very well and they have spent multiple amounts over the years than what this costs on its own. Cost is not important for them. Even monitor stands can never be classed as expensive. Brand loyalty, consumerism, platform lock in. It's the reason why Apple is so wealthy. People will defend the investment of their time and money by investing more.

kaba0 3y ago
It’s part but I think you disregard many of its “pro” userbase that prefers the often best-in-class hardware with okay software, which is much more privacy oriented than the alternative. At least on the phone market, iphones have much longer lifetime and can often be used second-third time as well (I also use a used iphone, which I plan on passing down to my mother when I upgrade). Their M-series laptops are unbiasedly the best and it is not even funny by how far. There is simply no competitor that would be anywhere near on the performance-battery life plot, and for that its price is really not high (especially an M1 air, used or new). Android’s wearables are toys compared to an apple watch also.

sebzim4500 3y ago

Sure, there won't be that many users but the ones that exist will be very willing to spend money. Like the early days of the appstore.

andrewstuart 3y ago

To be clear, for Apple, I would consider the Apple Watch a flop. Sure the product exists and people buy them, but it's no earth shaker - in contrast, a success for Apple is iPad, iPhone, Macintosh - products that if you ask some random person in an affluent country, there's a pretty good chance they own one, two three or more of these products. The Apple VR headset will not be a flop in the sense that Apple probably won't kill the product, but it also won't be any huge success by the measures above. It will at best be a niche, which is a flop for Apple.