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It's interesting that Magic Leap took $3.5 billion in investment, and had a very similar vision and almost identical demos. But they failed to deliver. I wande

It's interesting that Magic Leap took $3.5 billion in investment, and had a very similar vision and almost identical demos. But they failed to deliver. I wander what the R and D cost for the Vision Pro is, 10x Magic Leaps investment, $35 billion over last 5 years? Seems plausible... Their total R&D expense is about €100B in same time period.

danpalmer 3y ago
There's no way this has cost $35bn. Tech companies label a lot of stuff as R&D, it's almost more likely that the €100B value includes all the macOS/iOS/etc development as well. I expect until the last year or so this has been well under $1bn per year (based on 1000 people at $300k/yr, $300m). This will have ramped up as they begin figuring out mass production, but I'd still be surprised if this is more than single-digit billions for the last year, as it's not like they're reserving enough manufacturing or supplier capacity to make 100m of these devices yet.
- samwillis 3y ago
  I think if you start to include the cost of developing Vision OS on top of iOS, and cost of all the custom silicone Apple have in this, then you can approach that figure. They have the advantage that they had a lot of this in place for their portables. Magic did not and had to start from scratch. I suppose it's hard to judge how much of the R&D cost for Apple silicone, their cameras, LiDAR and iOS should be counted as costs for the Vision Pro.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    If you include the development of iOS and the A/M series chips then sure I guess it gets close, but it seems obvious to me they would have been doing those things anyway. I guess it depends whether you want an all-in cost to compare to Magic Leap, in which case you could argue that most of the history of Apple has set them up for this – if you want to make a great VR headset, just make the best phone ever first – if you want to make the best phone ever, just make a great personal computer first, just acquire NEXT first, etc. I don't know where you draw the line. More useful I think is to say what did it cost the companies above what they were already doing. For Magic Leap it's the whole business, for Apple it's not much, for Microsoft it's somewhere in the middle, for Meta it's maybe closer to Magic Leap.
    - samwillis 3y ago
      Yeh, exactly, I was aiming for a more direct comparison to Magic Leap. Effectively how much would it have cost them to actually achieve this level of functionality and polish, based on the "all in" cost for Apple.
      - danpalmer 3y ago
        I'm not sure if it's possible to draw that comparison. For example, Magic Leap could have used Android (I don't know, maybe they did?) and saved almost all of that iOS R&D cost. Even they were working on incremental costs over what already exists.
        WorldMaker 3y ago
        The issue is double-dipping/synergy of those costs. Magic Leap could have used Android, but they had no say in Android's development of or its API road map (or its processor road map or its GPU road map or its "neural engine" road map…). Apple benefits from the synergies of all of that development effort in ways that are really hard to quantify. Magic Leap using Google as a vendor to skip some of those steps also loses a lot of double/triple-used investment costs that come from even just having a seat at the road map table. The "neural engine" road map alone is probably one of the biggest, obvious to me examples, that relying on Google as a vendor wouldn't have worked but Apple could do it and make a large long term investment in it. Google has a lot of incentives to keep ML models in the Cloud as much as possible. Apple made an early choice to focus on privacy and decided that it would be nice to always have as much of, for example, Siri running directly and strictly on device as possible. The home assistant trend and overtly trying to be "the privacy-first option" during it gave Apple plenty of reason to invest in on-device hardware. The fact that on-device hardware is also extremely necessary for AR vision support if you were planning a headset (or for car vision needs, if those rumors are also true) is a leverageable bonus of the hardware already being deployed. Smart moves a decade ago that paid out once already and then are already in the wings ready and waiting for the next projects/products. (Meanwhile, how uncommon are "NPUs", discrete or SoC, in the general Android ecosystem still? Google had different incentives and different priorities and what pressure could a team like Magic Leap, especially if trying to "stealth" some of their tech, have on an ecosystem like that? Android doesn't care if Magic Leap is happy. Android can't predict where Magic Leap wants to go.) How do you quantify all the money that went into "we'd like as much of Siri as possible to run locally on devices, for at least user privacy if no other reason, wink" that naturally wound up on M2 chips and we assume influenced the R1 chip design and in turn doubles as a lot of visual processing power available for use to the Vision Pro? (How do you double/triple count it, because those existing use cases of running parts of Siri locally and dictation and other models locally also carry over from the iPhone/iPad/Mac into the Vision Pro?)
- jedberg 3y ago
  As was pointed out elsewhere, we've seen some of the R&D show up in other places already. AR kit has been around for a while. All of the Apple Silicon has been in everything for a few years now (except the new R1 chip, but I'm sure that builds on their M1/M2 work). Face unlocking tech on the iPhone applies to eye tracking (and eye unlocking). Battery tech applies across devices. All the new cameras on the last few years' of iPhones. And so on. So it's totally reasonable that total all in is in the 10s of billions.
YA_Scratch 3y ago
"Almost identical demoes" I doubt it.
- samwillis 3y ago
  Unless someone can confirm otherwise I assume all the demo videos are composited "mock-ups" and not shot through a vision device. They are incredibly similar to all the demo videos from Magic Leap.
  - azinman2 3y ago
    The device is very real.
  - d3nj4l 3y ago
    This article is literally from a person who used the device???
jmbwell 3y ago
Could be hard to break it down. It’s clear that much of what we have already — Sidecar, Continuity, all the ML subject recognition, spatial audio, image processing… is likely spun out of the development of this thing, or at least co-developed. This is the space program that brought us Tang, so to speak. Even if this thing flops magnificently, the whole Apple ecosystem will have been enriched by its development. From that perspective, it seems like a pretty low-risk high-reward effort for Apple, whatever it might have cost all told.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  > Sidecar, Continuity, all the ML subject recognition, spatial audio, image processing I also wonder if the real time OS stuff is a byproduct of the Apple Car project. As soon as they mentioned the R2 chip I immediately was asking myself "Did this come from the car project or will this make its way to the car project". Even if they never ship a car the tech they have to build/discover/etc in the process can help other product lines. Just like throwing Lidar into the phones/iPad Pro or all the ML/AR stuff helped this headset.
- r00fus 3y ago
  Don't forget all the "neural" branding for chips - this product wouldn't yet be viable without M-class (fanless) chipsets. So yeah, it's not just hard to pin down, but a lot of the work that led to this is foundational for other Apple products as well (either as core like Mac Ms or features like Continuity) so it's seamless with other products.

danpalmer 3y ago

There's no way this has cost $35bn. Tech companies label a lot of stuff as R&D, it's almost more likely that the €100B value includes all the macOS/iOS/etc development as well. I expect until the last year or so this has been well under $1bn per year (based on 1000 people at $300k/yr, $300m). This will have ramped up as they begin figuring out mass production, but I'd still be surprised if this is more than single-digit billions for the last year, as it's not like they're reserving enough manufacturing or supplier capacity to make 100m of these devices yet.

samwillis 3y ago
I think if you start to include the cost of developing Vision OS on top of iOS, and cost of all the custom silicone Apple have in this, then you can approach that figure. They have the advantage that they had a lot of this in place for their portables. Magic did not and had to start from scratch. I suppose it's hard to judge how much of the R&D cost for Apple silicone, their cameras, LiDAR and iOS should be counted as costs for the Vision Pro.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  If you include the development of iOS and the A/M series chips then sure I guess it gets close, but it seems obvious to me they would have been doing those things anyway. I guess it depends whether you want an all-in cost to compare to Magic Leap, in which case you could argue that most of the history of Apple has set them up for this – if you want to make a great VR headset, just make the best phone ever first – if you want to make the best phone ever, just make a great personal computer first, just acquire NEXT first, etc. I don't know where you draw the line. More useful I think is to say what did it cost the companies above what they were already doing. For Magic Leap it's the whole business, for Apple it's not much, for Microsoft it's somewhere in the middle, for Meta it's maybe closer to Magic Leap.
  - samwillis 3y ago
    Yeh, exactly, I was aiming for a more direct comparison to Magic Leap. Effectively how much would it have cost them to actually achieve this level of functionality and polish, based on the "all in" cost for Apple.
    - danpalmer 3y ago
      I'm not sure if it's possible to draw that comparison. For example, Magic Leap could have used Android (I don't know, maybe they did?) and saved almost all of that iOS R&D cost. Even they were working on incremental costs over what already exists.
      - WorldMaker 3y ago
        The issue is double-dipping/synergy of those costs. Magic Leap could have used Android, but they had no say in Android's development of or its API road map (or its processor road map or its GPU road map or its "neural engine" road map…). Apple benefits from the synergies of all of that development effort in ways that are really hard to quantify. Magic Leap using Google as a vendor to skip some of those steps also loses a lot of double/triple-used investment costs that come from even just having a seat at the road map table. The "neural engine" road map alone is probably one of the biggest, obvious to me examples, that relying on Google as a vendor wouldn't have worked but Apple could do it and make a large long term investment in it. Google has a lot of incentives to keep ML models in the Cloud as much as possible. Apple made an early choice to focus on privacy and decided that it would be nice to always have as much of, for example, Siri running directly and strictly on device as possible. The home assistant trend and overtly trying to be "the privacy-first option" during it gave Apple plenty of reason to invest in on-device hardware. The fact that on-device hardware is also extremely necessary for AR vision support if you were planning a headset (or for car vision needs, if those rumors are also true) is a leverageable bonus of the hardware already being deployed. Smart moves a decade ago that paid out once already and then are already in the wings ready and waiting for the next projects/products. (Meanwhile, how uncommon are "NPUs", discrete or SoC, in the general Android ecosystem still? Google had different incentives and different priorities and what pressure could a team like Magic Leap, especially if trying to "stealth" some of their tech, have on an ecosystem like that? Android doesn't care if Magic Leap is happy. Android can't predict where Magic Leap wants to go.) How do you quantify all the money that went into "we'd like as much of Siri as possible to run locally on devices, for at least user privacy if no other reason, wink" that naturally wound up on M2 chips and we assume influenced the R1 chip design and in turn doubles as a lot of visual processing power available for use to the Vision Pro? (How do you double/triple count it, because those existing use cases of running parts of Siri locally and dictation and other models locally also carry over from the iPhone/iPad/Mac into the Vision Pro?)
jedberg 3y ago
As was pointed out elsewhere, we've seen some of the R&D show up in other places already. AR kit has been around for a while. All of the Apple Silicon has been in everything for a few years now (except the new R1 chip, but I'm sure that builds on their M1/M2 work). Face unlocking tech on the iPhone applies to eye tracking (and eye unlocking). Battery tech applies across devices. All the new cameras on the last few years' of iPhones. And so on. So it's totally reasonable that total all in is in the 10s of billions.

YA_Scratch 3y ago

"Almost identical demoes" I doubt it.

samwillis 3y ago
Unless someone can confirm otherwise I assume all the demo videos are composited "mock-ups" and not shot through a vision device. They are incredibly similar to all the demo videos from Magic Leap.
- azinman2 3y ago
  The device is very real.
- d3nj4l 3y ago
  This article is literally from a person who used the device???

jmbwell 3y ago

Could be hard to break it down. It’s clear that much of what we have already — Sidecar, Continuity, all the ML subject recognition, spatial audio, image processing… is likely spun out of the development of this thing, or at least co-developed. This is the space program that brought us Tang, so to speak. Even if this thing flops magnificently, the whole Apple ecosystem will have been enriched by its development. From that perspective, it seems like a pretty low-risk high-reward effort for Apple, whatever it might have cost all told.

joshstrange 3y ago
> Sidecar, Continuity, all the ML subject recognition, spatial audio, image processing I also wonder if the real time OS stuff is a byproduct of the Apple Car project. As soon as they mentioned the R2 chip I immediately was asking myself "Did this come from the car project or will this make its way to the car project". Even if they never ship a car the tech they have to build/discover/etc in the process can help other product lines. Just like throwing Lidar into the phones/iPad Pro or all the ML/AR stuff helped this headset.
r00fus 3y ago
Don't forget all the "neural" branding for chips - this product wouldn't yet be viable without M-class (fanless) chipsets. So yeah, it's not just hard to pin down, but a lot of the work that led to this is foundational for other Apple products as well (either as core like Mac Ms or features like Continuity) so it's seamless with other products.