4 ms·

I'm not sure if this is a suprise for anyone. At 3.5k this is completely unaffordable for most of the world and even for high-earners in the US it's a tough pil

I'm not sure if this is a suprise for anyone. At 3.5k this is completely unaffordable for most of the world and even for high-earners in the US it's a tough pill to swallow for a first generation product. Not to mention that the Quest 3 is highly capable at 1/7th the price. I'm not sure what Apple's sales expectations were but if the Apple Vision Pro is not meeting them, they built the wrong product.

bitwize 2y ago
Adjusted for inflation, the Mac 128K cost as much as two Vision Pros. $2495 in 1984 dollars, equivalent to $7300 in 2023. It came with only 128k of RAM, as much as the Commodore 128, but with a fully bitmapped, high-resolution display and a much more sophisticated OS, leaving less room for applications. It did not come with a programming language; you had to buy third-party software to do anything with it and it could run only one, relatively simple, application at a time. It was the nearest thing to useless. Tech weenies dismissed it as the "Macintoy" and wondered how it would compete against far less expensive, but more programmable, machines like the PC and even the Commodore 128. And yet, it completely changed how the world computed. I do not see why the Vision Pro will not follow a similar trajectory, not least simply because it's an Apple product. Even if you sniffed at the first model, subsequent models will sport more powerful CPUs, more memory, better displays, and they will get the APIs and development model right to enable more kinds of applications. Apple is just dipping their toes into the water with this initial product much like they did with the Mac. Once they roll out more refined products, the difference with the Quest will be as night and day and it will be obvious that once again, Apple has changed how we compute.
- andrewmcwatters 2y ago
  Except it’s not 1984 anymore.
  - dartos 2y ago
    It’s always been 1984
- moomin 2y ago
  The thing is, there were people who used the Mac 128K and loved it. They had a use case, and it fit that use case perfectly. The Vision Pro, on the other hand, has a serious returns problem. People are finding that it isn't the usability slam-dunk the iPhone and the Mac were.
- willis936 2y ago
  >I do not see why the Vision Pro will not follow a similar trajectory Because there wasn't a $350 competitor that had been around for years that did much the same and excelled in some areas. It's an incremental product charging revolutionary prices: sub-orbital trajectory.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  > And yet, it completely changed how the world computed. This is really debatable. There have been computers before and after the Mac that were just as influential but much cheaper. Anecdotal of course, but back in the 80s and early 90s a Mac wasn't on my "must have list" at all. Macs were always overpriced and underpowered, and back then only useful for one thing: "desktop publishing". Amigas provided much more bang-for-the-buck, and technology-wise Silicon Graphics workstations were far ahead (at 10x the price of course). The Mac's real influence on mainstream computing might have been that it was an intermediate step to transfer the graphical UI research done at Xerox PARC into MS Windows ;)
- richgreeko222 2y ago
  [dead]
jasode 2y ago
>At 3.5k this is completely unaffordable for most of the world and even for high-earners in the US it's a tough pill to swallow for a first generation product. Apple already knows and has publicly stated that their high $3500 price limits adoption to a smaller market of enthusiastic (and wealthy) early adopters. Even though this particular 2024 iteration of the product is too expensive to be a mass consumer hit like the 1980s Sony Walkman, the more interesting question is if it can be the start of a new paradigm that will be later filled by cheaper iterations. Past examples of 1st iteration of products being very expensive but triggers a massive new market: - 1981 IBM PC costs $5240 in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars ($1565 in 1981 dollars) - 1983 Motorola DynaTAC (the "brick phone" ) is $11716 in 2023 dollars ($3995 in 1984) (And the first flat screen tv I bought in 2003 was $4100 for a 32-inch which is $7000 in today's dollars.) IBM PCs had the "killer app" with Lotus 123 spreadsheet software as a compelling reason to buy it. Indeed, one of the questions when evaluating cheaper clone computers was "does it run Lotus 123?". The issue is Apple Vision Pro doesn't have an analogous "killer app". The various demos in the Apple Store and Youtube videos of floating windows in your living room and immersive music videos are "interesting" ... but not indispensable tool for work and life. It's too early to tell if future cheaper iterations of Apple Vision Pro will eventually take off like other previous expensive products like the IBM PC -- or be relegated to niche status like the over-hyped $5000 Segway. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway
- glimshe 2y ago
  Small correction on your great reply for the sake of computer history: it's "Lotus 1-2-3", or "Lotus One Two Three", referring to the calculation, database and graphing capabilities... Some people might think it's "Lotus one hundred and twenty three"
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  The IBM PC (architecture) was mostly successful not because of IBM, but because of Microsoft though.
- 2y ago

bitwize 2y ago

Adjusted for inflation, the Mac 128K cost as much as two Vision Pros. $2495 in 1984 dollars, equivalent to $7300 in 2023. It came with only 128k of RAM, as much as the Commodore 128, but with a fully bitmapped, high-resolution display and a much more sophisticated OS, leaving less room for applications. It did not come with a programming language; you had to buy third-party software to do anything with it and it could run only one, relatively simple, application at a time. It was the nearest thing to useless. Tech weenies dismissed it as the "Macintoy" and wondered how it would compete against far less expensive, but more programmable, machines like the PC and even the Commodore 128. And yet, it completely changed how the world computed. I do not see why the Vision Pro will not follow a similar trajectory, not least simply because it's an Apple product. Even if you sniffed at the first model, subsequent models will sport more powerful CPUs, more memory, better displays, and they will get the APIs and development model right to enable more kinds of applications. Apple is just dipping their toes into the water with this initial product much like they did with the Mac. Once they roll out more refined products, the difference with the Quest will be as night and day and it will be obvious that once again, Apple has changed how we compute.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago
Except it’s not 1984 anymore.
- dartos 2y ago
  It’s always been 1984
moomin 2y ago
The thing is, there were people who used the Mac 128K and loved it. They had a use case, and it fit that use case perfectly. The Vision Pro, on the other hand, has a serious returns problem. People are finding that it isn't the usability slam-dunk the iPhone and the Mac were.
willis936 2y ago
>I do not see why the Vision Pro will not follow a similar trajectory Because there wasn't a $350 competitor that had been around for years that did much the same and excelled in some areas. It's an incremental product charging revolutionary prices: sub-orbital trajectory.
flohofwoe 2y ago
> And yet, it completely changed how the world computed. This is really debatable. There have been computers before and after the Mac that were just as influential but much cheaper. Anecdotal of course, but back in the 80s and early 90s a Mac wasn't on my "must have list" at all. Macs were always overpriced and underpowered, and back then only useful for one thing: "desktop publishing". Amigas provided much more bang-for-the-buck, and technology-wise Silicon Graphics workstations were far ahead (at 10x the price of course). The Mac's real influence on mainstream computing might have been that it was an intermediate step to transfer the graphical UI research done at Xerox PARC into MS Windows ;)
richgreeko222 2y ago
[dead]

jasode 2y ago

>At 3.5k this is completely unaffordable for most of the world and even for high-earners in the US it's a tough pill to swallow for a first generation product. Apple already knows and has publicly stated that their high $3500 price limits adoption to a smaller market of enthusiastic (and wealthy) early adopters. Even though this particular 2024 iteration of the product is too expensive to be a mass consumer hit like the 1980s Sony Walkman, the more interesting question is if it can be the start of a new paradigm that will be later filled by cheaper iterations. Past examples of 1st iteration of products being very expensive but triggers a massive new market: - 1981 IBM PC costs $5240 in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars ($1565 in 1981 dollars) - 1983 Motorola DynaTAC (the "brick phone" ) is $11716 in 2023 dollars ($3995 in 1984) (And the first flat screen tv I bought in 2003 was $4100 for a 32-inch which is $7000 in today's dollars.) IBM PCs had the "killer app" with Lotus 123 spreadsheet software as a compelling reason to buy it. Indeed, one of the questions when evaluating cheaper clone computers was "does it run Lotus 123?". The issue is Apple Vision Pro doesn't have an analogous "killer app". The various demos in the Apple Store and Youtube videos of floating windows in your living room and immersive music videos are "interesting" ... but not indispensable tool for work and life. It's too early to tell if future cheaper iterations of Apple Vision Pro will eventually take off like other previous expensive products like the IBM PC -- or be relegated to niche status like the over-hyped $5000 Segway. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway

glimshe 2y ago
Small correction on your great reply for the sake of computer history: it's "Lotus 1-2-3", or "Lotus One Two Three", referring to the calculation, database and graphing capabilities... Some people might think it's "Lotus one hundred and twenty three"
flohofwoe 2y ago
The IBM PC (architecture) was mostly successful not because of IBM, but because of Microsoft though.
2y ago