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I guess it was to be expected, but I struggle to imagine there's many people out there excited about this. The Vision Pro is an incredibly niche product to begi

I guess it was to be expected, but I struggle to imagine there's many people out there excited about this. The Vision Pro is an incredibly niche product to begin with, and many of the early adopters are going to be the sort of folks who are very aware of how poor a product Apple Intelligence is.

bookofjoe 2y ago
I got Vision Pro the very first day: February 2, 2024. I agree with every.single.word.you.wrote. Full disclosure: I've turned off Apple Intelligence in every Apple device I own: what a FAIL.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  They should get Siri to reliably turn on the TV and resume playing an Apple TV+ show (at the least) before trying to roll out “artificial intelligence”. Absolutely insane that in 2025, I cannot say “Siri, turn on the TV and resume Finding Nemo”, when it is playing in the TV app and is the first option listed there.
  - grvbck 2y ago
    Turning off Siri is the first thing I do on every new Apple device I get. Too many "Siri, play my gym playlist" -> "Sure, calling your boss" at 9 pm on a Sunday.
    - bookofjoe 2y ago
      Me too except for my watch, where it's very useful advancing/replaying a song while I'm out running in the cold with gloves on.
asadotzler 2y ago
Sony Display had physical capacity for 1,000,000 displays, 500,000 units across 2024. The plan was to ramp production in 2025 and 2026 but instead production was halted at or near the end of 2024 and Apple probably had most or all of that 500,000 produced. In the first couple months, about 250,000 sold and then another 150,000-200,000 sold over the rest of the Vision Pro's first year which just wrapped up, leaving about 50,000 to 100,000 units left for 2025, until the follow up spec bump arrives late in 2025 or early in 2026. Demand must be pretty low if 50K-100K units are enough to cover 2025. Now, if we look at Meta, they've sold a few tens of millions of Quests after 5 years in the market and likely has fewer than 10M active users (if they'd broken that ceiling they'd have said so, but growth has either slowed dramatically or stalled.) That suggests less than 50% usage compared to purchasers. If we assume similar for Vision Pro, that suggests about 200,000 active users after 1 years in the market, and less than 300,000 users after 2 years in market. Hard to say that's anything but a massive failure for Apple. A couple hundred thousand users with not much likelihood for growth in the next couple of years. The only possible saving grace could be the "affordable" model, expected to come in around $2,000 and support the latest greatest VisionOS, but with lowered component costs which will hit displays and lenses the hardest, I suspect. The premium materials and second screen probably also have to go to keep Apple happy with their margins. AVP had a BOM of about $1,550 and sold for $3,500, a 2.25X markup. Even if they drop their markup down to 2.0X and go with a Quest like optical stack and plastic housing, that BOM probably cannot fall to less than $1,000 meaning a $2,000 price tag. That Vision not-Pro is in development now and is likely to arrive about a year after the Pro spec bump (call it AVP 1.1 or 1.5) and at a price that's unlikely to spark a lot of new demand as it still comes in more costly than a family of iPhones, a couple of MacBook Airs or a solidly geared MacBook Pro, all infinitely more useful than the Vision Pro. Finally, there's the question of whether the goggles form factor can ever achieve mainstream appeal. Even Quest, with 5 years in market, hasn't broken out of a niche, with less than 1/10th the users as the last place game console. My theory is that normal people care about their appearance, and particularly their faces, a lot. Few are going to want to turn that face into something dorky now matter how good the experience. Further, about half the population is women and women spend about $500,000,000,000 on hair and makeup products every single years, and about an hour a day in the mirror applying all of that, before ever stepping foot outside the house. How are they gonna deal with taking that thing on and off throughout the day, at work as Tim Cook would have us believe. Will they need to spend time in the bathroom every couple hours fixing their faces, and how about that light seal? Can you imagine that foam all caked with makeup, slimy and growing things getting repeatedly smashed into your face and held in place with straps around your head? I had my first VR HMD experience at video game arcade in the mid-80s. I tried again in the '90s when a second, lighter generation built on PC components rather than bespoke stuff. The third generation never really left the labs but I played with them in the mid-2000s and they were seemingly built from laptop supply chains, with LCD screens and smaller form factors from the laptop shrinks. Finally, in about 2015, we got this 4th generation of HMDs, including stand-alone. Stand alone headsets I think did a lot for facial PCs but not enough. These things are still ~500-650 grams, ~18-24 oz, ~1.2-1.5 lbs.and they're not getting lighter. The 3rd generation of Quest is only 10% lighter than the 1st and the Vision Pro is 1.3X that because of premium materials and a second display mostly. I don't know if you've seen actual users posting photos but all of the regular users have multi-directional, after-market head straps that look a hell of a lot dorkier than the "Solo Knit Band" that Apple ships with the Vision Pro, unfit for purpose give all the after market solutions and their usage. Even the Quest eschewed function for fashion somewhat here and those users also need extra support to stop these facial PCs from literally causing them pain, in the face, head and neck. It doesn't seem like these things are approaching a usable form factor, or that they can. And though they would have you believe so, Meta and Apple are not evolving these HMDs into the spectacles form factor. AR spectacles will come, in about a decade they might even get some traction, but they are an entirely different tech stack and a mostly different user experience that's hardly "immersive" VR but rather more like your car's heads up display, in your glasses, perhaps with Apple Watch like capabilities for navigation, media, notifications, etc. and the hardware will offer narrow field of view (probably half that of VR goggles) and limited brightness and resolution making it ideal for simple overlays on the real world but hardly useful for rich experiences--again, think of how much you can do with your car's heads up display. So, if AVP and Quest goggles are failing, and decent AR spectacles are a decade away, how do these companies justify the combined $1,000,000,000 spent achieving only millions or hundreds of thousands of users and bridge the gap to AR spectacles? I think it'll be the OS. Facebook will have one, Google will have one, and Apple will have one. We may even see Microsoft or others come with their own but I suspect like mobile phones we'll settle on just a few operating systems. And I think these companies, which have each started with immersive VR goggles, because that's what current tech can do and because it makes for impressive demos, will start bending their operating systems more toward AR and less toward VR, eventually leaving immersive experiences behind in favor of less exciting but infinitely more practical AR spectacles which have an acceptable form factor for many and meaningful use cases for people outside of their homes. They will then claim that the goggles were always a transition technology and pretend that their massive investments weren't massive flops, but a necessary step on the path to spectacles. That of course will be complete horse shit, but what ever gets them to something actually usable for the masses is fine in my book. A shame that R&D spend was wasted on goggles instead of all going to spectacles. We might be 5 years away instead of 10+. Well, that's Silicon Valley for you, go big or go home, even if it's entirely the wrong play.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  > My theory is that normal people care about their appearance, and particularly their faces, a lot. This is true, but also mostly irrelevant. People will cross that bridge if it's worth it, potentially in waves until general acceptance. Headphones had to cross that barrier, and it's not uncommon now to have people walking around all day with an earplug in their ear. Watches back in the days, and smart watches now have gone the same path. Norms will change. The real question is whether the VR headset provide something worth it, and the answer for now is mostly "nah", games and niche occupations being the only real beneficiaries. We're still waiting for somethings that has the versatility and pragmatism of the Quest and a yet better harder specs than the AVP. Basically a retina MacBook moment. When we get there I think there will be a lot more potential, and we'll accept the VR goggles as workhorses where the bulk has a purpose, vs the "normal" glasses which can be lighter and do a lot less (what we already have with the Ray-Bans) The OS won't probably also matter that much when we get cross platform apps as we've seen in the mobile and ganing world.
  - grvbck 2y ago
    > Headphones had to cross that barrier Even mobile phones! I'm old enough to remember the first "popular" models in the 80's, like the Ericsson Hotline. Sure, the phone might've been cool, but the people using them certainly were not. Regarding the headset, I have a feeling that the hardware simply might still be far too immature. Imagine if we had the tech to put augmented reality and actually smart/helpful ai tools in the form factor of contact lenses, paired with a reasonable pricetag. I think that would be an instant hit.
- 42772827 2y ago
  > So, if AVP and Quest goggles are failing, and decent AR spectacles are a decade away, how do these companies justify the combined $1,000,000,000 spent achieving only millions or hundreds of thousands of users and bridge the gap to AR spectacles? They’re only 5-10 years away if companies make a version now, and learn about every aspect of the design, manufacture, and distribution. Otherwise they’ll never get built and still might not.
- 2y ago

bookofjoe 2y ago

I got Vision Pro the very first day: February 2, 2024. I agree with every.single.word.you.wrote. Full disclosure: I've turned off Apple Intelligence in every Apple device I own: what a FAIL.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
They should get Siri to reliably turn on the TV and resume playing an Apple TV+ show (at the least) before trying to roll out “artificial intelligence”. Absolutely insane that in 2025, I cannot say “Siri, turn on the TV and resume Finding Nemo”, when it is playing in the TV app and is the first option listed there.
- grvbck 2y ago
  Turning off Siri is the first thing I do on every new Apple device I get. Too many "Siri, play my gym playlist" -> "Sure, calling your boss" at 9 pm on a Sunday.
  - bookofjoe 2y ago
    Me too except for my watch, where it's very useful advancing/replaying a song while I'm out running in the cold with gloves on.

asadotzler 2y ago

Sony Display had physical capacity for 1,000,000 displays, 500,000 units across 2024. The plan was to ramp production in 2025 and 2026 but instead production was halted at or near the end of 2024 and Apple probably had most or all of that 500,000 produced. In the first couple months, about 250,000 sold and then another 150,000-200,000 sold over the rest of the Vision Pro's first year which just wrapped up, leaving about 50,000 to 100,000 units left for 2025, until the follow up spec bump arrives late in 2025 or early in 2026. Demand must be pretty low if 50K-100K units are enough to cover 2025. Now, if we look at Meta, they've sold a few tens of millions of Quests after 5 years in the market and likely has fewer than 10M active users (if they'd broken that ceiling they'd have said so, but growth has either slowed dramatically or stalled.) That suggests less than 50% usage compared to purchasers. If we assume similar for Vision Pro, that suggests about 200,000 active users after 1 years in the market, and less than 300,000 users after 2 years in market. Hard to say that's anything but a massive failure for Apple. A couple hundred thousand users with not much likelihood for growth in the next couple of years. The only possible saving grace could be the "affordable" model, expected to come in around $2,000 and support the latest greatest VisionOS, but with lowered component costs which will hit displays and lenses the hardest, I suspect. The premium materials and second screen probably also have to go to keep Apple happy with their margins. AVP had a BOM of about $1,550 and sold for $3,500, a 2.25X markup. Even if they drop their markup down to 2.0X and go with a Quest like optical stack and plastic housing, that BOM probably cannot fall to less than $1,000 meaning a $2,000 price tag. That Vision not-Pro is in development now and is likely to arrive about a year after the Pro spec bump (call it AVP 1.1 or 1.5) and at a price that's unlikely to spark a lot of new demand as it still comes in more costly than a family of iPhones, a couple of MacBook Airs or a solidly geared MacBook Pro, all infinitely more useful than the Vision Pro. Finally, there's the question of whether the goggles form factor can ever achieve mainstream appeal. Even Quest, with 5 years in market, hasn't broken out of a niche, with less than 1/10th the users as the last place game console. My theory is that normal people care about their appearance, and particularly their faces, a lot. Few are going to want to turn that face into something dorky now matter how good the experience. Further, about half the population is women and women spend about $500,000,000,000 on hair and makeup products every single years, and about an hour a day in the mirror applying all of that, before ever stepping foot outside the house. How are they gonna deal with taking that thing on and off throughout the day, at work as Tim Cook would have us believe. Will they need to spend time in the bathroom every couple hours fixing their faces, and how about that light seal? Can you imagine that foam all caked with makeup, slimy and growing things getting repeatedly smashed into your face and held in place with straps around your head? I had my first VR HMD experience at video game arcade in the mid-80s. I tried again in the '90s when a second, lighter generation built on PC components rather than bespoke stuff. The third generation never really left the labs but I played with them in the mid-2000s and they were seemingly built from laptop supply chains, with LCD screens and smaller form factors from the laptop shrinks. Finally, in about 2015, we got this 4th generation of HMDs, including stand-alone. Stand alone headsets I think did a lot for facial PCs but not enough. These things are still ~500-650 grams, ~18-24 oz, ~1.2-1.5 lbs.and they're not getting lighter. The 3rd generation of Quest is only 10% lighter than the 1st and the Vision Pro is 1.3X that because of premium materials and a second display mostly. I don't know if you've seen actual users posting photos but all of the regular users have multi-directional, after-market head straps that look a hell of a lot dorkier than the "Solo Knit Band" that Apple ships with the Vision Pro, unfit for purpose give all the after market solutions and their usage. Even the Quest eschewed function for fashion somewhat here and those users also need extra support to stop these facial PCs from literally causing them pain, in the face, head and neck. It doesn't seem like these things are approaching a usable form factor, or that they can. And though they would have you believe so, Meta and Apple are not evolving these HMDs into the spectacles form factor. AR spectacles will come, in about a decade they might even get some traction, but they are an entirely different tech stack and a mostly different user experience that's hardly "immersive" VR but rather more like your car's heads up display, in your glasses, perhaps with Apple Watch like capabilities for navigation, media, notifications, etc. and the hardware will offer narrow field of view (probably half that of VR goggles) and limited brightness and resolution making it ideal for simple overlays on the real world but hardly useful for rich experiences--again, think of how much you can do with your car's heads up display. So, if AVP and Quest goggles are failing, and decent AR spectacles are a decade away, how do these companies justify the combined $1,000,000,000 spent achieving only millions or hundreds of thousands of users and bridge the gap to AR spectacles? I think it'll be the OS. Facebook will have one, Google will have one, and Apple will have one. We may even see Microsoft or others come with their own but I suspect like mobile phones we'll settle on just a few operating systems. And I think these companies, which have each started with immersive VR goggles, because that's what current tech can do and because it makes for impressive demos, will start bending their operating systems more toward AR and less toward VR, eventually leaving immersive experiences behind in favor of less exciting but infinitely more practical AR spectacles which have an acceptable form factor for many and meaningful use cases for people outside of their homes. They will then claim that the goggles were always a transition technology and pretend that their massive investments weren't massive flops, but a necessary step on the path to spectacles. That of course will be complete horse shit, but what ever gets them to something actually usable for the masses is fine in my book. A shame that R&D spend was wasted on goggles instead of all going to spectacles. We might be 5 years away instead of 10+. Well, that's Silicon Valley for you, go big or go home, even if it's entirely the wrong play.

makeitdouble 2y ago
> My theory is that normal people care about their appearance, and particularly their faces, a lot. This is true, but also mostly irrelevant. People will cross that bridge if it's worth it, potentially in waves until general acceptance. Headphones had to cross that barrier, and it's not uncommon now to have people walking around all day with an earplug in their ear. Watches back in the days, and smart watches now have gone the same path. Norms will change. The real question is whether the VR headset provide something worth it, and the answer for now is mostly "nah", games and niche occupations being the only real beneficiaries. We're still waiting for somethings that has the versatility and pragmatism of the Quest and a yet better harder specs than the AVP. Basically a retina MacBook moment. When we get there I think there will be a lot more potential, and we'll accept the VR goggles as workhorses where the bulk has a purpose, vs the "normal" glasses which can be lighter and do a lot less (what we already have with the Ray-Bans) The OS won't probably also matter that much when we get cross platform apps as we've seen in the mobile and ganing world.
- grvbck 2y ago
  > Headphones had to cross that barrier Even mobile phones! I'm old enough to remember the first "popular" models in the 80's, like the Ericsson Hotline. Sure, the phone might've been cool, but the people using them certainly were not. Regarding the headset, I have a feeling that the hardware simply might still be far too immature. Imagine if we had the tech to put augmented reality and actually smart/helpful ai tools in the form factor of contact lenses, paired with a reasonable pricetag. I think that would be an instant hit.
42772827 2y ago
> So, if AVP and Quest goggles are failing, and decent AR spectacles are a decade away, how do these companies justify the combined $1,000,000,000 spent achieving only millions or hundreds of thousands of users and bridge the gap to AR spectacles? They’re only 5-10 years away if companies make a version now, and learn about every aspect of the design, manufacture, and distribution. Otherwise they’ll never get built and still might not.
2y ago