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Apple cuts Vision Pro shipments as demand falls 'sharply beyond expectations'
- CodeWriter23 3y agoHuh. For something that presents more like an engineering prototype than a product, who woulda thought?
- musicale 3y agoDemand for 400K Vision Pro devices at $3500 each greatly exceeds my expectations.
- VHRanger 3y agoIt seems like it's been 3 decades and no one ever learns the lesson that normal people don't want to put a computer on their face. It's a weird thing to do. As for productivity, typing would have to... work...? For this product to be useful. Otherwise, VR remains a gaming product.
- jjeaff 3y agoCan't you just use a physical keyboard?
- we_love_idf 3y agoWe are talking about Apple, the company that has changed humanity forever. So if any compancy can make it happen, It will be Apple.
- HexDecOctBin 3y agoThe only companies that can be considered to have changed humanity are the various European East Indian Companies. Apple is not even close to that ballpark.
- tmpz22 3y agoRight? Apple is a blink in human technological process. People credit them with the invention of small-form-factor and HCI. They are not.
- bogwog 3y agoYou sound like a real Crazy One™®©
- latentcall 3y ago>changed humanity forever Yeah for the worse.
- ardit33 3y agounfortunately, AVP has ignored gaming altogether (to apple it is an annoyance). At least it could have had some kind of push forward of the industry in that front. The resolution is not yet good enough for work either. The only thing that it does well right now is laid back video/media entertainment, and that's it.
- jjeaff 3y agoSeems like a pretty large market of people who want to watch something in bed while their partner sleeps or watches something else. but it would need to be a lot cheaper for just that use.
- minimaxir 3y agoChicken-and-egg problem. There won't be VR games that take full advantage of the AVP unless there's enough of a market for them. Given how badly the PSVR 2 flopped, it may be too risky for game devs currently.
- dwaite 3y agoI don't think they ignored gaming; they just knew they would fail if they designed a gaming-first device. Their best bet to bootstrap the platform is to make it computing-first around the iPad platform, and that means leading with multitasking, AR/MR, and with computing-oriented inputs.
- gurumeditations 3y agoActually they should’ve limited it to being a spatial computing productivity headset to enhance the productivity of actual professional Mac users, like 3D artists, music producers, programmers, etc. They could’ve severely reduced the size and weight of the headset, maybe even made it glasses form, if they simply anchored it, wirelessly even, to a nearby Mac. From there they could’ve expanded the spatial capabilities over time and eventually create a consumer version. The Vision Pro is the Newton of mixed reality.
- snapcaster 3y agoWhat do you mean the resolution isn't good enough for work? I haven't had any issues reading or viewing content in it
- yunwal 3y agoThis feels like a thing where Apple needs to be very clear on who their early adopters are. The only situation I could see myself wanting this is if I was on a plane/train for several hours a day and needed to work or just wanted a good place for entertainment. Seems like they haven’t really pinned that crowd down though and not being able to have multiple virtual monitors is a sales killer imo.
- germinalphrase 3y agoCost (and style… and comfort… and…) aside, I can’t see spatial computing taking off until co-located experiences become well refined. For instance, can a small group of people play a table top game together where half are in the room, half are remote, and the experience feels quite fluid.
- achandlerwhite 3y agoIve heard 1.2 of Vision OS has nice boardgame like experiences.
- oneepic 3y agoThis is a repeat of the HoloLens, which I'm sure is a repeat of other failures, but I lack the historical context.
- snapcaster 3y agoI used the Hololens it was pretty janky. I will say the AVP is the first device I used that nailed the AR interaction/display stuff PERFECTLY. It really is just lacking the software ecosystem but they've got the fundamentals worked out at least. I'm hopeful it doesn't die and keeps getting developed
- jameshart 3y agoHoloLens didn’t fail, it just changed: https://defensescoop.com/2023/09/21/army-awards-microsoft-95m-for-additional-ivas-1-2-headsets-virtual-trainers/ https://defensescoop.com/2023/09/21/army-awards-microsoft-95...
- andrewmthomas87 3y agoThis thing makes me want to more than anything before. But, not at that price.
- vundercind 3y agoYep. Not tempted by other headsets at $400 or whatever. I’ve tried them, had access to them for free, still they just gathered dust. Might be tempted by this one… at like $1,500. Maybe. At $800 (I know, no way given the BOM cost alone) I’d probably already have one.
- averyvery 3y agoA lot of people have made a lot of money arguing that users want immersive computing, and the more immersive it is, the more they'll pay for it — therefore, the next biggest VR product is gonna be The Big One. It doesn't seem like it's going to pay off.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoMany people want immersive computing, for sure. But whether today's technology can actually deliver that (at any price point) is what everyone is arguing about.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brigadier132 3y agoIt costs too much.
- gchokov 3y agoway too much
- cjk2 3y agoMeh. I think it's about the right price for the quality. However I can't think of any actual applications for it that would have a return on investment which means it's not worth spending that money. Literally everything it does can be done better elsewhere for less money.
- hackeraccount 3y agoI disagree. It delivers too little for the cost. I'm sure you could sell a $3,500.00 face computer but it's got to deliver more - smaller, lighter, faster, etc. - then this does.
- brigadier132 3y ago> I disagree. It delivers too little for the cost I feel like this is a rephrasing of the same thing. If it delivers too little for the cost it costs too much.
- PreachSoup 3y agoI am amazed that they even have the expectations in the first place
- Terretta 3y agoThey didn't. Following launch week, the number was revised upward from below this new number based on the pace of sales in launch week. They seem to have misestimated the number of folks deliberately purchasing to blog or YouTube about it then return it.
- Freedom2 3y agoIf you read the HackerNews thread then it was announced, it was widely claimed this was the next big thing. Very curious how so many got it wrong.
- shtopointo 3y agoStill amazing that they would get to 400k.
- georgeecollins 3y agoMaybe for the price point, but Occulus has sold like 10x as many quests. There are a lot of people who like VR for gaming, exercise and chat. I think the Vision is too expensive and has too little software support.
- jbverschoor 3y agoQuest 2: 20 million (installs?) from oct'20 - q1'23, so lets say 2.5 years. (makes sense, Qualcomm said 10m in dec'21) Quest 3 Sold an Estimated 900K-1.5 Million Units in Q4 2023. Vision Pro is nice and all, but it's such a high price to pay although you're essentially buying a macbook pro. Still, in terms of revenue is still $1.4B for the quarter
- snapcaster 3y agoYeah I'm the only person I know who has one (I know one other buyer but they returned it). I'm honestly shocked it's over 100k sold since I feel like i'm in a pretty tech-early-adopter bubble
- bugbuddy 3y agoThis proves that there are at least 400k die-hard-price-insensitive Apple enthusiasts who are willing to spend that much for Apple’s latest gadgets. If I was Apple’s executive, I would double down on more high-priced novel products, even niche ones, that integrate in various ways to the Apple ecosystem.
- nojvek 3y ago400k is a pretty small number. Apple spent years on VisionPro with a large team. This means so they are likely in the red (unprofitable) on VisionPro. This ignores the opportunity cost of the VisionPro team working on something else. Apple could have made normal fashionable glasses with a screen aka The Apple Watch / Apple AirPods strategy - but for eyes. But they went the heavy ski mask strategy with 2 hour battery life.
- minimaxir 3y agoWasn't this also the case with the Apple Watch back in 2015? The hardware there was a 1st-generation dud too.
- pbharrin 3y agoThis product is more like the Apple Newton than the watch.
- nozzlegear 3y agoI'm sure you could go back to the launch of the Apple Watch and find comments saying it was more like the Apple Newton.
- asadotzler 3y agoNo. They didn't. They said it was missing some fitness features they wanted and hoped that software updates or next year's rev would fix that -- which they did. It was always clear that the form factor was workable and the execution just needed to evolve a tiny bit. The AVP has an unworkable form factor: 2 pounds of headset and battery, and wearing it means mussing your hair and makeup and smashing a strap-on dorkbox to the front of your face. That's entirely unworkable in ways that cannot be fixed with a software update or even next year's incremental hardware improvements. This form factor is a decade away from mainstream at best. This is nothing like the Watch and only someone with a child's view of these products would make that claim.
- nozzlegear 3y agoYou and I have very different recollections of the Apple Watch’s launch then. Everyone was convinced that the battery life would doom the product into obsolescence before it was even shipped to consumers. Only someone with a child’s view of these products would be unable to see the similarities between the two launches.
- bombcar 3y agoFrom what I remember the number of people who bought a watch was small, but they wore it. The problem with AVP is that the people who DID buy it can't manufacture reasons to USE it. Apple needed to have a very strong push out of the gate with new content weekly.
- tiffanyh 3y ago$1B in AVP sales. I wonder what Apple's sales expectations were for AVP. $1B in revenue for a brand new product that's only been out for 2.5 months seems a massive success to me [0]. But then again, at Apple's scale - $1B isn't much. https://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/1045835/apple-expected-to-top-earnings-estimates-with-vision-pro-sales-of-up-to-1b-1045835.html https://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/1045835/ap...
- hot_gril 3y ago"Apple has cut its 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400–450k units (vs. market consensus of 700–800k units or more)"
- Terretta 3y agoThe expectation pre-launch was in the 150K - 250K range. It revised upward based on pace of sales in launch weeks, which I think was thrown off by the number of people buying to review and return. Market consensus went through the roof based on pace of initial sales then those numbers stuck, but some Apple numbers at the time seemed to suggest this same 400K range.
- matsemann 3y agoI wonder how many bought one just to blog or make a video about it to gain on the hype, only to not use it further (possibly even returning it).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wdb 3y agoWaiting for it to go on sale where I live
- tombert 3y agoYeah I can't imagine why something that cost $3500 that was heavy and required an external battery pack that had almost no reason to exist would sell poorly. VR is cool but it's not "$3500 for a toy" cool, at least not for me and I think not for most people.
- darth_avocado 3y ago$3500 before taxes or accessories to keep it safe
- tombert 3y agoThis might just be the cynic in me, but people walking around with a $3500+ item attached to their face just screams "rob me!" I mean, I got my comparatively-cheaper 2-year-old iPhone 12 Pro Max stolen from me about a year ago in a mugging, and that wasn't even nearly as flagrant. A person who wants to mug someone sees someone wearing an Apple Vision Pro, and they know that this person has a $3500 item glued to their face, as well probably an expensive iPhone in their pocket as well.
- snapcaster 3y agoThey've fixed it, but when I bought mine they didn't have Find My integrated yet lol. Was a little worried walking home carrying that bag
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago> I got my comparatively-cheaper 2-year-old iPhone 12 Pro Max stolen from me about a year ago in a mugging That is just a dumb mugger since those phones can only be sold for parts given the way Apple locks them down with your password/Pin/Face. The only place those phones can go is on a ship container to China to be recycled for spare parts, and even that's dubious.
- tombert 3y agoNot that I really want to defend someone who mugged me, but to be fair I don't think he knew it was an iPhone. I keep mine in a case and they grabbed it out of my hands pretty quick and ran. Even if they knew it was an iPhone and that I was going to lock it once I get home, I doubt he would go "Oh shit, is this an iPhone? Nevermind, you can have it back". Fun fact, when I got home, I of course locked it right away, but I got my wife to call it to see if we could get ahold of the mugger, and we did, and he said he would give it back to me for $300. There was no chance in hell I was going to give him money and reward extortion, and I had no guarantees that even if I did give him the money that I'd get the phone back anyway [1], but I suppose that that's still a market right? I suspect at least some percentage of people do end up paying just to minimize the headaches of having to buy a new phone. I'll admit that while it was never really "on the table", for just an instant I did consider just paying the guy instead of having to buy another expensive phone while unemployed. [1] In this case I am principled to a fault. I have a very strong "I will not be extorted, I will not reward extortion, and I do not negotiate with terrorists" policy in my life. It's one of the very few hills I will actually die on, and it's bitten me a few times.
- dsabanin 3y agoI think Apple was out of touch releasing such an expensive product with such niche use cases in the current times. If they wanted us to become early adopters and proof-of-concept testers, they should've subsidized the cost, to grow the market while working on improving the device.
- sneak 3y agoIt’s a dev kit.
- jbverschoor 3y agoThe AppleTV dev kit was $1 :-)
- sp332 3y agoThen why be surprised that demand dried up?
- monocasa 3y agoApple has released dev kits before. Most recently the apple silicon devkits. Those have pretty much universally been explicit and have come with a requirement to return the devkits once consumer hardware capable of being development hardware is released. They were hoping for consumer (or industry) acceptance. They visibly did not get that.
- sneak 3y agoIt doesn’t even support IMAP email credential payloads in provisioning profiles. This is some of the bare minimum required for enterprise use. I haven’t tried to MDM one yet. I don’t even know how you’d supervise one without a port to connect it to AC2. It’s quite clearly not designed for mainstream use without enterprise features or a consumer price point. Remember also that hardware pipelines are 2-3 years long. They almost certainly are well into the design of the consumer model that will come out in 18-24 months. By that time, there will be many apps available for them because of the AVP1 being in the hands of tens of thousands of developers for 12+ months.
- xyst 3y agoA first gen, $4K (minimum) piece of equipment didn’t live up to its hype. Who could have predicted this?! It’s a good looking piece of tech, but unfortunately like the rest of the Apple ecosystem. It’s locked down. It’s out of reach (price wise) for most people. The mandatory App Store from a user perspective is dead to me. Repair process looks painful. Facebook and Apple need to change their shit up. Open up the ecosystem. Let users load up their own OS/Apps. Stop tying it down to your locked down ecosystems and warranty programs. Give us root, build schematics, and let us build. Stop abusing your users and developers.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dmitrygr 3y agoIf you were right and THAT was what users cared about AND acted accordingly, android would own the majority of the high-end phone market. It doesn’t.
- syklep 3y agoIt does, except in the US, where iMessage and other lock-in tactics help cement their stranglehold
- dmitrygr 3y agoEver seen Japan ?
- swyx 3y agoabsolutely bizarre that imessage is considered a lock in tactic when all they do is green bubble blue bubble phoneshaming and whatsapp exists for the other stuff
- asadotzler 3y agoRalph Lauren had a lock on my friend cohort in 10th grade. If you didn't have the polo logo on your shirt, you were ridiculed. If you had a logo that looked a little bit like the Polo logo but wasn't you got cast out. My parents said "but this other shirt we bought you is superior in every way and doesn't break our budget" and I said, "I need the Polo or I'm killing myself." Kids care what their friends think. A lot. Green bubbles are the same thing and so parents get their kids iPhones instead of Galaxies and the lock continues.
- underseacables 3y agoGive me Daemon operative glasses and we can talk, but the Apple Helmet is not it.
- nozzlegear 3y agoDaniel Suarez's Daemon? If so, count me in!
- underseacables 3y agoYES! That is the tech we should be racing towards. I dream of having a pair of glasses that can display information for me a la Google Glass but not so obvious. I also wish I could record everything I see, and have software analyze it for me later picking out things I might have missed. Creepy and unsettling to everyone else, but I would love it.
- snapcaster 3y agoI actually really enjoy mine, and having fun learning how to do iOS/VR development. That being said, until it can run MacOS apps I can't really replace my laptop (instead have to connect it to the AVP). Assuming that's a software limitation and not something that requires upgraded hardware I hope they plan to release that functionality soon
- dwaite 3y agoIt is highly unlikely that iPads or AVP will ever natively run Mac apps. At best, you would be able to run MacOS as a VM with some clever maintenance/windowing/storage tweaks.
- eddieroger 3y agoI do, too, and agree with what you're saying. This device is great if you can afford to drop the cash on it and have use cases for which it excels. I would love it to run Mac apps, but am just as happy projecting my Mac to it. Content consumption is great on it, and I really enjoy working with it on. If only my coworkers didn't find my ghostly Persona do off-putting during Zoom calls.
- snapcaster 3y agoI do use projecting the mac, but it's not a great experience overall. Like it doesn't utilize any of the AVP interaction paradigms and if I want to use a keyboard I have to decide to hook it up to my mac or my AVP
- layer8 3y agoApple wants you to buy both (as with the iPad), and maybe more importantly wants the OS of new device categories to be much less open (more controllable) than macOS is. So that’s very unlikely.
- snapcaster 3y agoI mean, i'm all in on apple and have all that stuff. Would be fine if it's up offloading compute to a mac or something like that and make the integration more seamless
- proee 3y agoIs there a market for a "simple" Google Glasses type product, to show alerts and overlays in a regular set of glasses? For productivity, I could see replacing my Apple watch with a pair of Apple Glasses. Useful for alerts and basic data such as exercise stats and GPS overlays, etc. Add a few buttons to the side of the glasses for core functions. Is there no market for such a product, or is the tech for this still to primitive?
- infotainment 3y agoI think the problem is, all those things you just described (alerts, etc), are Good Enough™ on a smartwatch. Could you put them in smart glasses too? Sure, but the display tech just isn’t there yet to make it nonintrusive.
- BoorishBears 3y agoIt sounds like you want Oppo Air Glass if it ever releases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5KPfCzqqhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5KPfCzqqhQ
- LASR 3y agoMulti-monitor support might have made this worthwhile for professional / prosumer users. But you can only have a single display in VR. My single oldschool physical display works way better. So this limitation makes it an expensive curiosity than a useful tool.
- fullwaza 3y agoThere is an app called split screen that solves this. I'm able to bring in my MBP and a second screen. It works really well actually.
- Terretta 3y ago> you can only have a single display in VR That's not a hardware limitation. See https://immersed.com https://immersed.com In AVP I tend to run three displays equivalent to MacBook screen, but five is fine too in a kind of + shape.
- ado__dev 3y agoThe lack of a killer app suite alongside the $4k price-point is what kept me at bay.
- bugbuddy 3y agoIt’s $3500.
- ado__dev 3y ago+ tax + a case for it puts it at over $4k.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoI don't pay tax and I don't need a case
- duped 3y agoBut how will I watch a movie or game with my friends if none of them have AVP?
- powera 3y agoI own an AppleVision (and am mostly happy with it), but this is not surprising. The current system isn't worth $3500 to consumers. It is priced at about twice what people will expect, has very limited apps, and very limited "immersive media". Some of that will get better over the next year ... but a promise of "better next year" won't move units today.
- causal 3y agoI feel like we're reaching an inflection point where tech-companies are about to discover whether humans are willing to live in an all-digital world, or if they would rather just continue physical reality with digital-enhancements. Tech companies keep pushing towards all-digital because they carry a lot more power in a world of their own making. They keep trying to get away from solving real-world pain points (e.g. being able to talked to loved ones) to solving for manufactured pain points (e.g. dopamine addiction to short-form content).
- tim333 3y agoOr which they prefer. The iPhone device like set up seems the most popular really. It wouldn't surprise me if it still is a century hence.
- vjulian 3y agoSmartphones (still) offer novelty, and there are no alternatives to some of their useful functions, hence popularity. I’ll be livid if smartphone-type devices are popular a century from now.
- lostmsu 3y agoIt is also possible that their headset just sucks.
- causal 3y agoYes. Someday augmented reality glasses will be possible in the form-factor of regular glasses, and I see no reason that would be unpopular.
- paxys 3y agoNot surprising considering a $500 Quest 3 gets you most of the way there and has a much better (and much more open) ecosystem.
- Terretta 3y agoThis widely held opinion generally doesn't survive a couple days of non-gaming use.
- jimmySixDOF 3y agoand here comes Google/Samsung with their big XR announcement getting back into hardware/software this year.
- wombat-man 3y agoI was hyped to buy one until I tried the demo. Just needs to be a bit lighter. Being cheaper couldn't hurt either.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kernal 3y agoThe hubris of Apple to think people would buy such an overpriced and underwhelming headset. They should have developed a mid priced VR headset.
- wetpaws 3y ago[dead]
- SirMaster 3y agoWho would have thought people don't want this big thing on over their face for long periods?
- tkdev2 3y ago[dead]