10 ms·

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 actua

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.
- michaelt 3y ago
  Personally, I don't believe the business market actually exists. I always hear people giving made up use cases like "oh, service engineers will be able to see instructions overlaid on the machines they're working on" but a paper service manual costs a lot less than a 3D augmented reality manual - and anyone who's worked with service engineers knows for any repair that's performed often enough that productivity is important, the service engineer will know the process by heart. Oh sure, you can sell a few units to architecture companies that want to dazzle rich clients. But you can't sustain a product like this on sales of 1000 units per year. Google Glass and HoloLens both targeted the "business market" but that's just them saving face when they can't hit a price point that makes any sense.
  - cjlacz 3y ago
    I have a friend that works on software and hardware for large industrial design and manufacturing. They apparently use and sell the HoloLens and it's quite useful. It's not really for showing off to clients. It can significantly reduce errors in repair.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      And how many units have they brought, in total?
  - sidibe 3y ago
    I agree that these (Glass and HL2 at least, and Vision seems a lot like HL2) are probably not actually useful to businesses. The military bought enough Hololens (for whatever reason) to make it worth it for Microsoft. They knew that ahead of time too. Apple has enough people that will buy whatever they make that this will be successful even if it is also useless.
pier25 3y ago
It's not going to get significantly cheaper though. Even at half the price it would still be quite expensive considering the roi.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
andrewstuart 3y ago
>>. am i REALLY that old? am i taking crazy pills? What you are, is snarky. The only times Apple ever did this in the past, the product flopped because it was too expensive. Maybe other companies have been leading with expensive tech waiting for the market to catch up, but Apple hasn't - not since the Lisa anyway. And yes I am on old fogey - ol enough to remember that the industry has been waiting for consumers to "catch up" to VR for many many years. It's not happening - VR is a niche. Ordinary people don't want to put a VR headset on - they just don't - there's no catching up because 99% of the people I know would never put on a headset except for one impressive demo and never again. This thing will at best do "okay" - it's too expensive - there won't be a critical mass of software for it, and VR is a niche.
- astrange 3y ago
  This isn't a VR product, it's an AR product. Although not one you'd use outside much, so still limited.
- slaterbug 3y ago
  > Ordinary people don't want to put a VR headset on - they just don't They will when it's got an Apple logo on it.
- geysersam 3y ago
  > Ordinary people don't want to put a VR headset on - they just don't. Why not? Because it's heavy, sweaty, smelly, expensive, uncomfortable for the eyes, or some other reason? I doubt people have real ideological aversion towards headsets. If people don't want them it's probably because of one of the practical reasons above. And honestly most of those are likely to be alleviated in the near future.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    Why are you so hopeful any of these will be fixed in anything like the near future? Phones have been working to reduce weight per FLOPS for more than a decade, and you can only do so much - and you need many more FLOPS for VR. Similarly, the need to keep these screens glued in place relative to your eyes, and to use complex electro-mechanical optics in addition to the screens, put quite a strict limit on how comfortable or small they can physically be. Batteries only add to this, and weight-to-power ratio for batteries is progressing at a snail's pace. I'd bet that if Apple thought in any way that they might have a sunscreen form-factor device in anything close to 5 years from now they would have held off on releasing anything to the public. All signs 100% point to bulky headsets being the state-of-the-art for the foreseeable future, and this is going to keep dooming this technology. Not to mention, the fact that no one has really found a good way to allow you to move around in the VR "space" that they're creating with anything other than a controller (to an extremely disorienting effect even then) also puts a serious damper on our ability to suspend disbelief while enjoying such a device.
zakki 3y ago
I don't think Apple will bring their price down in the next 3-5 years. Just look at how their current product price. No product price goes down.
- n42 3y ago
  Apple famously dropped the price of the first iPhone by $200 (a 33% reduction from $599 to $399!) two months after launch; then gave people who bought it in that time a $100 credit. https://web.archive.org/web/20070908223628/http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070908223628/http://www.apple....
- mft_ 3y ago
  No, but they'll likely release a cheaper variant. Note that this is the Vision Pro - there's perhaps a Vision, or a Vision Air, in the pipeline.
- jonfw 3y ago
  MacBook Air m2 just got 100 cheaper yesterday
holoduke 3y ago
Iphone wasnt 3.5k. Imac neither. Ipad not. Ipod wasnt. The Macintosh maybe? No it wasnt.
- zztop44 3y ago
  The Macintosh was $7000 in 2022 dollars.
  - p_l 3y ago
    Macintosh was somewhat cheap at release time - $2495 for graphical computer, albeit very limited in many ways. In fact, probably it's major "groundbreaking" aspect was that it was cheap - compared to nearly 10x more expensive graphical workstations used in professional settings. A standalone Sun-2/120, with cpu, 1M of memory, 42MB hard drive, tape interface, ethernet interface and software, cost $16300 in 1984 dollars, over 45k today. So yeah, Macintosh was cheap
- jansan 3y ago
  You could pay more than $50000 for a max spec Intel Mac Pro just a few days ago (at the risk of being outperformed by a Mac Mini). Marques Brownlee called it the most overpriced tech product currently on the market.
- bsder 3y ago
  The Lisa and the Mac were very expensive for their day--probably at the same level as this. The difference was that the Mac shipped with WYSIWYG editing software (MacWrite and MacPaint) that was so obviously better than anything on the IBM that it was a no brainer. People wanted them very much, but most of us simply couldn't afford them. In addition, desktop publishing was a stupidly obvious killer app on the Macintosh (Fat Mac plus LaserWriter plus Aldus Pagemaker) and you could make your money back within a couple of jobs given how much money you would save.
  - p_l 3y ago
    I find $2495 of original Macintosh to be pretty cheap compared to $16k or more of other graphical workstations at the time.
elorant 3y ago
It is difficult because Apple has never dropped the price in any of its products, aside from one time offers.
philwelch 3y ago
> 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? Zoomers don’t remember a time before any of those things. Hell, they don’t even remember some of those things.

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.
michaelt 3y ago
Personally, I don't believe the business market actually exists. I always hear people giving made up use cases like "oh, service engineers will be able to see instructions overlaid on the machines they're working on" but a paper service manual costs a lot less than a 3D augmented reality manual - and anyone who's worked with service engineers knows for any repair that's performed often enough that productivity is important, the service engineer will know the process by heart. Oh sure, you can sell a few units to architecture companies that want to dazzle rich clients. But you can't sustain a product like this on sales of 1000 units per year. Google Glass and HoloLens both targeted the "business market" but that's just them saving face when they can't hit a price point that makes any sense.
- cjlacz 3y ago
  I have a friend that works on software and hardware for large industrial design and manufacturing. They apparently use and sell the HoloLens and it's quite useful. It's not really for showing off to clients. It can significantly reduce errors in repair.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    And how many units have they brought, in total?
- sidibe 3y ago
  I agree that these (Glass and HL2 at least, and Vision seems a lot like HL2) are probably not actually useful to businesses. The military bought enough Hololens (for whatever reason) to make it worth it for Microsoft. They knew that ahead of time too. Apple has enough people that will buy whatever they make that this will be successful even if it is also useless.

pier25 3y ago

It's not going to get significantly cheaper though. Even at half the price it would still be quite expensive considering the roi.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

andrewstuart 3y ago

>>. am i REALLY that old? am i taking crazy pills? What you are, is snarky. The only times Apple ever did this in the past, the product flopped because it was too expensive. Maybe other companies have been leading with expensive tech waiting for the market to catch up, but Apple hasn't - not since the Lisa anyway. And yes I am on old fogey - ol enough to remember that the industry has been waiting for consumers to "catch up" to VR for many many years. It's not happening - VR is a niche. Ordinary people don't want to put a VR headset on - they just don't - there's no catching up because 99% of the people I know would never put on a headset except for one impressive demo and never again. This thing will at best do "okay" - it's too expensive - there won't be a critical mass of software for it, and VR is a niche.

astrange 3y ago
This isn't a VR product, it's an AR product. Although not one you'd use outside much, so still limited.
slaterbug 3y ago
> Ordinary people don't want to put a VR headset on - they just don't They will when it's got an Apple logo on it.
geysersam 3y ago
> Ordinary people don't want to put a VR headset on - they just don't. Why not? Because it's heavy, sweaty, smelly, expensive, uncomfortable for the eyes, or some other reason? I doubt people have real ideological aversion towards headsets. If people don't want them it's probably because of one of the practical reasons above. And honestly most of those are likely to be alleviated in the near future.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Why are you so hopeful any of these will be fixed in anything like the near future? Phones have been working to reduce weight per FLOPS for more than a decade, and you can only do so much - and you need many more FLOPS for VR. Similarly, the need to keep these screens glued in place relative to your eyes, and to use complex electro-mechanical optics in addition to the screens, put quite a strict limit on how comfortable or small they can physically be. Batteries only add to this, and weight-to-power ratio for batteries is progressing at a snail's pace. I'd bet that if Apple thought in any way that they might have a sunscreen form-factor device in anything close to 5 years from now they would have held off on releasing anything to the public. All signs 100% point to bulky headsets being the state-of-the-art for the foreseeable future, and this is going to keep dooming this technology. Not to mention, the fact that no one has really found a good way to allow you to move around in the VR "space" that they're creating with anything other than a controller (to an extremely disorienting effect even then) also puts a serious damper on our ability to suspend disbelief while enjoying such a device.

zakki 3y ago

I don't think Apple will bring their price down in the next 3-5 years. Just look at how their current product price. No product price goes down.

n42 3y ago
Apple famously dropped the price of the first iPhone by $200 (a 33% reduction from $599 to $399!) two months after launch; then gave people who bought it in that time a $100 credit. https://web.archive.org/web/20070908223628/http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070908223628/http://www.apple....
mft_ 3y ago
No, but they'll likely release a cheaper variant. Note that this is the Vision Pro - there's perhaps a Vision, or a Vision Air, in the pipeline.
jonfw 3y ago
MacBook Air m2 just got 100 cheaper yesterday

holoduke 3y ago

Iphone wasnt 3.5k. Imac neither. Ipad not. Ipod wasnt. The Macintosh maybe? No it wasnt.

zztop44 3y ago
The Macintosh was $7000 in 2022 dollars.
- p_l 3y ago
  Macintosh was somewhat cheap at release time - $2495 for graphical computer, albeit very limited in many ways. In fact, probably it's major "groundbreaking" aspect was that it was cheap - compared to nearly 10x more expensive graphical workstations used in professional settings. A standalone Sun-2/120, with cpu, 1M of memory, 42MB hard drive, tape interface, ethernet interface and software, cost $16300 in 1984 dollars, over 45k today. So yeah, Macintosh was cheap
jansan 3y ago
You could pay more than $50000 for a max spec Intel Mac Pro just a few days ago (at the risk of being outperformed by a Mac Mini). Marques Brownlee called it the most overpriced tech product currently on the market.
bsder 3y ago
The Lisa and the Mac were very expensive for their day--probably at the same level as this. The difference was that the Mac shipped with WYSIWYG editing software (MacWrite and MacPaint) that was so obviously better than anything on the IBM that it was a no brainer. People wanted them very much, but most of us simply couldn't afford them. In addition, desktop publishing was a stupidly obvious killer app on the Macintosh (Fat Mac plus LaserWriter plus Aldus Pagemaker) and you could make your money back within a couple of jobs given how much money you would save.
- p_l 3y ago
  I find $2495 of original Macintosh to be pretty cheap compared to $16k or more of other graphical workstations at the time.

elorant 3y ago

It is difficult because Apple has never dropped the price in any of its products, aside from one time offers.

philwelch 3y ago

> 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? Zoomers don’t remember a time before any of those things. Hell, they don’t even remember some of those things.