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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 se

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.

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.