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I suspect your expectations for sales are much loftier than Apple’s. The million sales mark was from one single report by Kuo. Kuo himself previously said they

by dagmx 2y ago

I suspect your expectations for sales are much loftier than Apple’s. The million sales mark was from one single report by Kuo. Kuo himself previously said they were limited to ~900K display units which is ~450K devices and other analysts have said the same. There is no other source saying 1M was the target that I know of that doesn’t trace back to Kuo. If they are at ~500K units then they’ve exceeded the initial sales target that Kuo himself laid out. For your second point about a follow up, you’re comparing product announcement to product launches. The product itself only launched 10months ago. You’re expecting a second iteration within 10 months, of an entirely new product class for them ? Meanwhile other more popular Apple products often go longer between releases. Even Meta are around two years between products within a device class. Your last point of comparing to a meta quest is misplaced too. They’re different classes of the same device category. There’s no way Apple are expecting to compete with a device a tenth of its price for total sales.

aprilthird2021 2y ago
But the products are not 10x different in quality and especially there is not 10x more content on the AVP than the Quest
- dagmx 2y ago
  If all you care about is gaming, perhaps. But there’s a lot of areas where the Vision Pro is a better product to the point where the price difference is irrelevant. Much like professional cameras aren’t actually 10x the features of prosumer cameras, yet command a higher price because of what they enable at the high end. Industrial and medical use, creative platforms etc, Literally the only other headsets I can use for the lines of work I’m involved with are 4x the price of the Vision Pro (the Varjo XRs), yet by your metric wouldn’t be worthwhile. And this is the problem with people who don’t consider usecases beyond their own.
  - dangus 2y ago
    So Apple, the company that doesn't sell an enterprise cloud computing platform and doesn't sell a business productivity suite wants to sell the Vision Pro to specialized industries? Excuse me for being very skeptical. I don't see a whole lot of Apple marketing material talking about the Vision Pro as a professional device. They have a grand total of one press release that highlights different uses for business. There's no landing page that says "contact sales" or anything like that you'd see for an enterprisey specialized solution. In my mind the more plausible explanation is that Apple misjudged the pricing strategy for the Vision Pro, a device that it considers to be primarily a consumer content device. If the Vision Pro was a $1000 product they would have potentially had a hit. But I think what's going to happen is that Apple is going to have a product like that in 2026 and when it comes out the response is going to be quite muted.
    - Nevermark 2y ago
      As a daily user of Apple Vision Pro, I can see the value of creating a much cheaper non-pro version. But I could also see the value of a comparably priced or even higher priced version, with ultra versions of their M chips, going all in as a Mac or MacBook upgrade in terms of user interface. I use mine as a MacBook Pro screen upgrade. I would love to dispense with the MacBook, while retaining Mac level (as apposition to limited iOS style) applications.
    - dagmx 2y ago
      Apple literally has Enterprise specific APis for it https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/10139 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/10139 Also in terms of press releases, a quick google search shows these two https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-vision-pro-brings-a-new-era-of-spatial-computing-to-business/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-vision-pro-brin... https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-vision-pro-unlocks-new-opportunities-for-health-app-developers/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-vision-pro-unlo... Just because Apples consumer marketing pages don’t target enterprise, doesn’t mean they don’t target enterprise as a product. See the Mac Pro webpage that also doesn’t mention enterprise contacts https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ but it’s clearly not targeted for just consumers either.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    > Industrial and medical use, creative platforms etc, Literally the only other headsets I can use for the lines of work I’m involved with are 4x the price of the Vision Pro (the Varjo XRs), yet by your metric wouldn’t be worthwhile But the AVP cannot be used for any of these use cases, and as far as I know is not in serious use for professionals in such industries at scale, so why are you acting as if I was blind to the real reason people buy it? None of those are reasons people would buy it today. Also, you seem to not be aware that the Quest series actually have a professional / industrial business sales setup and do actually make large volumes of sales for business use cases, unlike AVP (https://forwork.meta.com/quest/business-subscription/ https://forwork.meta.com/quest/business-subscription/)
    - dagmx 2y ago
      It is being used in those industries. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42480926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42480926 for a bunch of links to early medical use. The reason I think you’re not counting those is because you claim equivalency of capability despite cost difference, but there’s clear areas that I know of where a Quest would not cut it. Your link to metas business use has no relation to my argument. I’m not saying the quest can’t be used for business cases, because I myself have set up professional environments around it. But that’s why I’m confident in saying the Vision Pro allows for a level of fidelity that the Quest cannot provide for today.
dangus 2y ago
It really wasn't something where I was looking to follow anyone else's sales expectations, it's something where I see a consumer product from Apple selling less than 1 million units and I see a failure. (It's really not even a Mac Pro-like product that is an ecosystem and professional strategy play, it's truly just a content consumption device at its core more similar to an iPad). You're right that the Meta Quest is a different class of the same device category. But that's the problem, isn't it? Apple made a device that is in a different class of the same device category, really far away in a price point where just aren't any customers. That's why Apple actually needed an unusually fast follow-up device, because the first product was too close to being an overpriced barely-working tech demo, similar to the original iPhone and Apple Watch. I think it is quite safe for us to all assume that Apple isn't releasing a Vision Pro follow-up in the next couple of months. The iPhone 3G dropped the price and outclassed the original iPhone owners so much that Steve Jobs had to write an apology letter. The Apple Watch released a new product that resolved all the gripes from the first one in 12 months. I just think as a business strategy that Apple is missing the mark here with the Vision Pro.
- dagmx 2y ago
  To your last point, you’re confusing the iPhone 3G and the original iPhone. The original iPhone was the one that had a price drop after launch which included the apology response, not the iPhone 3G. To the rest of your point, I’m sure Apple is aware that there aren’t a lot of customers at the 3500 dollar mark. They’ve said as much in interviews, but you’d have to attribute a lot of hubris to them to think they thought they’d steal market share from the Quest line. Again, all reports say they can’t even manufacture enough right now to be more than a blip on the sales chart. Perhaps your first paragraph bellies your confusion because you claim it’s just a consumption device, and partly that’s because apples marketing focuses on it, because it’s the easiest thing to communicate. The 3500 price tag is exactly the starting price point of other high end XR headsets that are used in many non-consumption areas. I say starting, because they go up considerably from there (see the Varjo XR prices). That’s the space where it’s not consumption, but work. It’s the same way that a Mac Pro can be used to view Netflix the same way a MacBook Air can, and they have similar capabilities on paper but widely different markets to target. From all accounts of working with those industries, Apple has eaten that market share. Varjo has stopped being the headset of choice for most of those cases, to the point that even NVIDIA (who were a huge Varjo customer) are doing Vision Pro courses at siggraph and made it the headset they feature for professional work ( https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-awe-2024/omniverse-apple-vision-pro https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-awe-2024/omniverse-apple-... ) Basically, don’t take Apple’s consumer facing marketing as their entire sales pitch. They have completely separate paths for businesses. None of this is to say that there aren’t areas that Apple has missed on with the headset. There clearly are several, but I don’t think sales strategy is actually one of them. Marketing is perhaps an issue though.

by dagmx 2y ago

aprilthird2021 2y ago

But the products are not 10x different in quality and especially there is not 10x more content on the AVP than the Quest

dagmx 2y ago
If all you care about is gaming, perhaps. But there’s a lot of areas where the Vision Pro is a better product to the point where the price difference is irrelevant. Much like professional cameras aren’t actually 10x the features of prosumer cameras, yet command a higher price because of what they enable at the high end. Industrial and medical use, creative platforms etc, Literally the only other headsets I can use for the lines of work I’m involved with are 4x the price of the Vision Pro (the Varjo XRs), yet by your metric wouldn’t be worthwhile. And this is the problem with people who don’t consider usecases beyond their own.
- dangus 2y ago
  So Apple, the company that doesn't sell an enterprise cloud computing platform and doesn't sell a business productivity suite wants to sell the Vision Pro to specialized industries? Excuse me for being very skeptical. I don't see a whole lot of Apple marketing material talking about the Vision Pro as a professional device. They have a grand total of one press release that highlights different uses for business. There's no landing page that says "contact sales" or anything like that you'd see for an enterprisey specialized solution. In my mind the more plausible explanation is that Apple misjudged the pricing strategy for the Vision Pro, a device that it considers to be primarily a consumer content device. If the Vision Pro was a $1000 product they would have potentially had a hit. But I think what's going to happen is that Apple is going to have a product like that in 2026 and when it comes out the response is going to be quite muted.
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    As a daily user of Apple Vision Pro, I can see the value of creating a much cheaper non-pro version. But I could also see the value of a comparably priced or even higher priced version, with ultra versions of their M chips, going all in as a Mac or MacBook upgrade in terms of user interface. I use mine as a MacBook Pro screen upgrade. I would love to dispense with the MacBook, while retaining Mac level (as apposition to limited iOS style) applications.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    Apple literally has Enterprise specific APis for it https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/10139 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/10139 Also in terms of press releases, a quick google search shows these two https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-vision-pro-brings-a-new-era-of-spatial-computing-to-business/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-vision-pro-brin... https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-vision-pro-unlocks-new-opportunities-for-health-app-developers/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-vision-pro-unlo... Just because Apples consumer marketing pages don’t target enterprise, doesn’t mean they don’t target enterprise as a product. See the Mac Pro webpage that also doesn’t mention enterprise contacts https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ but it’s clearly not targeted for just consumers either.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  > Industrial and medical use, creative platforms etc, Literally the only other headsets I can use for the lines of work I’m involved with are 4x the price of the Vision Pro (the Varjo XRs), yet by your metric wouldn’t be worthwhile But the AVP cannot be used for any of these use cases, and as far as I know is not in serious use for professionals in such industries at scale, so why are you acting as if I was blind to the real reason people buy it? None of those are reasons people would buy it today. Also, you seem to not be aware that the Quest series actually have a professional / industrial business sales setup and do actually make large volumes of sales for business use cases, unlike AVP (https://forwork.meta.com/quest/business-subscription/ https://forwork.meta.com/quest/business-subscription/)
  - dagmx 2y ago
    It is being used in those industries. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42480926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42480926 for a bunch of links to early medical use. The reason I think you’re not counting those is because you claim equivalency of capability despite cost difference, but there’s clear areas that I know of where a Quest would not cut it. Your link to metas business use has no relation to my argument. I’m not saying the quest can’t be used for business cases, because I myself have set up professional environments around it. But that’s why I’m confident in saying the Vision Pro allows for a level of fidelity that the Quest cannot provide for today.

dangus 2y ago

It really wasn't something where I was looking to follow anyone else's sales expectations, it's something where I see a consumer product from Apple selling less than 1 million units and I see a failure. (It's really not even a Mac Pro-like product that is an ecosystem and professional strategy play, it's truly just a content consumption device at its core more similar to an iPad). You're right that the Meta Quest is a different class of the same device category. But that's the problem, isn't it? Apple made a device that is in a different class of the same device category, really far away in a price point where just aren't any customers. That's why Apple actually needed an unusually fast follow-up device, because the first product was too close to being an overpriced barely-working tech demo, similar to the original iPhone and Apple Watch. I think it is quite safe for us to all assume that Apple isn't releasing a Vision Pro follow-up in the next couple of months. The iPhone 3G dropped the price and outclassed the original iPhone owners so much that Steve Jobs had to write an apology letter. The Apple Watch released a new product that resolved all the gripes from the first one in 12 months. I just think as a business strategy that Apple is missing the mark here with the Vision Pro.

dagmx 2y ago
To your last point, you’re confusing the iPhone 3G and the original iPhone. The original iPhone was the one that had a price drop after launch which included the apology response, not the iPhone 3G. To the rest of your point, I’m sure Apple is aware that there aren’t a lot of customers at the 3500 dollar mark. They’ve said as much in interviews, but you’d have to attribute a lot of hubris to them to think they thought they’d steal market share from the Quest line. Again, all reports say they can’t even manufacture enough right now to be more than a blip on the sales chart. Perhaps your first paragraph bellies your confusion because you claim it’s just a consumption device, and partly that’s because apples marketing focuses on it, because it’s the easiest thing to communicate. The 3500 price tag is exactly the starting price point of other high end XR headsets that are used in many non-consumption areas. I say starting, because they go up considerably from there (see the Varjo XR prices). That’s the space where it’s not consumption, but work. It’s the same way that a Mac Pro can be used to view Netflix the same way a MacBook Air can, and they have similar capabilities on paper but widely different markets to target. From all accounts of working with those industries, Apple has eaten that market share. Varjo has stopped being the headset of choice for most of those cases, to the point that even NVIDIA (who were a huge Varjo customer) are doing Vision Pro courses at siggraph and made it the headset they feature for professional work ( https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-awe-2024/omniverse-apple-vision-pro https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-awe-2024/omniverse-apple-... ) Basically, don’t take Apple’s consumer facing marketing as their entire sales pitch. They have completely separate paths for businesses. None of this is to say that there aren’t areas that Apple has missed on with the headset. There clearly are several, but I don’t think sales strategy is actually one of them. Marketing is perhaps an issue though.