Oh hey, it’s that time again. Copy-pasting from the last time around…
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Because the price is always the main topic, I’m gonna drop a link to an AR/VR expert contextualizing the Vision Pro price within the current (well, 7 months ago) market:
Norm from Tested on yt had good things to say after his hands-on with the headset iirc a while back. This is just the price of a flagship VR device ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Relatedly, I think people would be surprised how little the Apple Tax really is when accounting for specs and performance. That said I'm sure the margin is quite a bit higher on this device than an mbp. It's very clearly not positioned for consumers but for businesses and bleeding edge enthusiasts
It feels very much like most stuff that's likely to be developed for it will have the feel of "museum exhibit at home" or AR-ified iOS app.
The inability to use any controller is going to lose them a lot of latency and precision sensitive usecases. It is very Apple to make it totally standalone, but it's going to cost them a fair bit.
A lot of real time remote control usecases will be impossible for latency issues alone, it won't be a good solution in most multiuser environments (both due to no relative tracking, but also cost and hygiene issues for shared devices), it won't be great for bringing into public spaces (poor long range tracking, etc) or small spaces (limits gestures), hand tracking camera position means you have to hold your hands up and mostly open (accessibility issues), etc.
Even if the hardware can do more, Apple won't give developers access to more.
All it has to do is impress people enough that they hear about the 500 dollar headsets that are almost as good. Or the 250 dollar headsets that are almost as good as those. As long as they don't go as low as the 50 dollar headsets that are not as good relatively as being worth 50 dollars compared to the other headsets.
By getting it in the hands of a bunch of influencers, it'll do what Apple devices always do, make stuff look like a good idea for normal people to use too, not just nerds. Just to show normal people, who have probably had limited or bad experiences with VR, that there is "a" price point that solves almost all their problems with it.
Most will balk at the price, but have their perspective changed anyway. And some of them will look into or passively hear about other cheaper options. And then practically priced headsets will gain more marketshare and software will be worth the financial investment to make. It's unfortunately not a quick process, and it's only one part of that same process. But it's a pretty important part.
VR software has already been in a pretty good place for a few years, but it can always use "more and better", as with any software ecosystem.
Half of the US is over a hundred million people. The rumours are Apple has supply constraints that will limit global sales to about a million devices for now.
This can't possibly be a mass market device - it's just not possible right now to manufacture that many. The tiny screens are 3,400 DPI and 5000 nits (that's about 10x brighter than a typical TV or computer screen). It's going to be a while before tech like that can be mass produced.
They named it Vision "Pro" which in Apple marketing speak basically means "the really expensive one". Their "Pro" desktop PC tower has a baseline price of $7k and fully upgraded it comes in at almost $13k which is actually cheaper than they were when they used Intel Xeons a couple years ago (those could hit something like $80k).
There will probably be a non-pro equivalent one day, which will be far cheaper.
The profit margins in AI are fleeting at best. There's no point in squabbling over who's paying for what training data. Very, very soon it's all going to be free anyway.
A $2k CAD phone I can justify if it’s going to hold me in good stead over the next 6 years and have another 6 full OS upgrades straight from the manufacturer. My iPhone X held up great for 6 years, and only started struggling in 2023.
A $3,500 USD fashion accessory? What are they smoking, and can I have some?
We do it in a non-commercial nature. Meta does it in the hope of building a market, estasblishing paywalls and eventually turning a profit - all the while never paying the original creators.
This is exactly what they (and Google and many others) do with personal user data. We manufacture the data, they collect it without due consideration (payment) and use it to profit so much that they've become some of the wealthiest businesses in the world. They've robbed us via deceptive fine print, why wouldn't they think they can get away with this also?
man you didnt used to sell pirated dvds? i mean i didnt but i sure supported those who did. Guess what i am trying to say is i am always down with piracy
Nah man, although I did buy some of my first CDs that were rips with home printed covers from this girl who was the daughter of my dad's lawyer friend. Nowadays though I think paying for piracy is for chumps - even if I do admit that people with hacked Firesticks get better access to live sports with their dodgy subscriptions.
It doesn't even do spatial computing well. It can simulate a single 4k display and that's it. You can have some other apps floating around you, but not much.
If I could simulate 8 4k displays all around me, or freely float my full blown Mac OS programs and resize them to infinity then I'd be cool with this. But I've got more screen in front of me right now than the vision could ever hope to do. And Apples "apps" are far too gimped to be useful. Notes and email are cool, but not much else.
It uses foveated rendering, so yeah it is effectively close to looking at a hidpi display across your entire field of vision, in a sphere around you. And you can use it effectively as a virtual monitor with a Mac, but you really have to design for the interface for a good experience
Technology used to be more about solving a problem or making something difficult easier. This thing has no real use beyond "neat". But that Apple logo holds some very powerful magic for certain people.
No I have. Creating a product then finding a use is the very definition of cart before horse-ing. Marketing does most of the heavy lifting for getting people excited about crap they don't need, and Apple is the king of marketing.
If it’s anything like my other VR headsets the novelty wears off in 10.. this runs dangerously close to not getting to the bottom of my cupboard with all the other shithouse headsets
Buying Apple products is like buying permanent training wheels for bicycles. There are safeguards in place. The average consumer needs those safeguards. They are gullible, ignorant of technology, and they don't want to learn.
That said, Apple does do it right, at the cost of high prices and less control. Apple dumbs down their products for their consumers, and it works.
As a household with multiple severs, a PiHole, and four self-built desktops… and iPhones, and iPad, and an ancient MacBook, you couldn’t be more correct. That person’s comment is insane.
I said "average consumer." Not people who use the fediverse. I own Apple products. I also own Windows. My comment still stands despite offending other Apple users.
I understand limiting application source to the official one by default.
Heck, even on Linux systems the default is always to have just the official repositories enabled, with the exception of Flatpak which is quite sandboxed.
And who else Apple would trust to bare the default source than Apple themselfs?
But user must be able to choose otherwise if wants, period.
The apple vision pro doesn't have motion controllers like the quest line of headsets, so apps would have to be redesigned for hand tracking instead.
Also, apple said recently that devs have to cannot describe their apps using the words VR, AR, or XR on any platform it is on, they have to be called spacial computing apps, so anything with VR in the title like VRChat can't get ported without a full rebrand.
I think what was meant here is that it won't run apps designed for the Oculus Quest lineup (which is based on Android), not the actual Facebook application
Isn't that kind of like saying that if you can't afford 2024 MB S63 AMG then you're not in Mercedes Benzs' target audience? I bet the profit Apple makes from selling iPhones dwarfs the earnings from selling these goggles even if they're successful.
It's Apple. I expected nothing less than the most ridiculously priced products to be produced by them. So the figure is eye watering but expected. If these sellout, as some predict, it proves unequivocally that Apple fanboys are the most rabid idiots in existence.
For a high end enterprise geared headset that functions as its own standalone device and doesn’t require any connection to any other computer to work, this isn’t even expensive.
This isn’t meant to compete with something like a Quest. It’s meant to compete with something like the Varjo Aero, which goes from $5-10k.
For a company deciding on implementing AR/VR, the cost to get a Quest Pro for $800 plus a $2500 workstation to power it, vs a $3500 Vision Pro that doesn’t need a workstation, it’s pretty comparable.
There’s always people out there that want to be on the bleeding edge. People spend $2000+ on just a 4090 card, or $2000 on a stupid folding phone that breaks from a grain of sand.
Honestly, I don't even need half of the things that it does to justify the price, for me - just give me a dual 4k, 100 hz displays and a display port connector and I'll gladly shell out 3k to play vr video games on it.
If these sellout, as some predict, it proves unequivocally that Apple fanboys are the most rabid idiots in existence.
looks like you value money much higher than some others do - interpret that however you will.
Eh the general consensus is that this launch is a small early adopter phase and they have cheaper versions in the pipeline. They're only producing <100k units, definitely not going for mass adoption yet
If I can lie on my couch while typing away on my custom virtual workspace it might be worth it but the resolution requirements make that unlikely any time soon
This thing is overpriced but there’s no way Apple ships it if they don’t have the pixel density to render text in a way that doesn’t make your eyes bleed. It’s being marketed as a work device, after all.
Yah but my dream setup is something that mimic 2/3 monitors sitting on a desk (or some VR-optimized version of that). In the real world those monitors are each 1080p+ and sitting in full view so the whole "scene" you're looking at has many more pixels than just what is on all the monitors combined. If you scale that scene down to 4K resolution then the text on those monitors would likely be blurry or unreadable.
Obviously there are other ways to make a 4K resolution usable by zooming way in but that's much less "screen" real estate than what a real workspace offers.
It also has basically no battery life and once that mostly useless battery becomes completely useless you are never unplugging that thing from the wall because you bet Apple made that battery impossible to replace!
Did they say this or is this your pet theory? I don't feel like that is necessarily the best strategy, since people won't develop for it, when there's no users and no users will appear when no one develops an ecosystem for this thing...
You have to start somewhere. The iPhone was a game changer so it took of instantly. Something like an AR/VR headset is still pretty niche even today about 10 years after VR really became a thing.
This isn't really a "pet" theory — just economics. VR represents an entirely new product line, and with Apple's expansion into services, a whole new way to value-add to those services and entire ecosystem; capturing more recurring revenue. This price point is based on new manufacturing costs at a much smaller scale than their other product lines.
It's Apple, so it'll never be "cheap", but it can't remain at this price point and stave off competition for long. Within 3 years they'll either drop the price and introduce a pro version, or release an SE version, that'll still probably be around $2000-2500 — but bringing it within reach of the people who'd normally buy "pro" devices.
This is interesting because you’re correct that this is almost certainly a dev kit that they’re making people pay for.
However: this is very unlike Apple to do if it’s true. We ask ourselves, “What is the enthusiast or middle class user able to afford for good VR?” And as we’ve seen, consumer headsets are aimed at less than $1000.
So the plan is for Apple to put out an amazing headset with the best materials and best screen and eye tracking and all this, only for them to wait some years before releasing a worse version of this that still costs over $1000? I can’t see how Apple would get beneath this price point. And I can’t see how they’d justify themselves.
So your average consumer isn’t using this anytime soon. Did they just make a weird toy line for the rich?
They need to build hype, and if that means they are pushing a demo on walk-ins,then I don't have an issue with it as long as they accept a "No thank you" from the customer.
If you can afford it you can buy it, the purpose of a product does not need to affect availablility.
you’re either lying
Why go straight into calling me a liar? This just shows that you don't want to have a proper discussion.
wrong,
This is quite possible, I have been wrong before, and I will be wrong in the future, it happens, and is not the end of the world unless you realy fuck up.
or have an agenda.
I can't figure out any agenda that I would push regarding the Vision Pro.
In the end, it is a theory, based on resonable data available to me.
My work PC costs twice that. There’s Apples influence has nothing to do with my Thinkpad.
I’ve worked on workstations that cost as much as a nice car. Apples pricing only comes close because they charge so much for storage. When you’re working with triple digit gigabytes of ram machines it ain’t cheap.
Apple makes by far the best laptop out there. No machine comes close when it comes to performance and battery life. Intel has a decent performance per watt under load, but under light non idle loads it’s not even close. My Thinkpad is incapable of getting decent battery life. Lenovos 10 hour battery life is a damn lie. I get 30 minutes to 3 hours at best. Our work MacBook pros easily get 10+ doing the exact same workload. AMD gets close, but they’re falling down the same trap Intel has been for the last 10 years.
My work PC costs twice that. There’s Apples influence has nothing to do with my Thinkpad.
Please show me your $7k Thinkpad.
When you’re working with triple digit gigabytes of ram machines it ain’t cheap.
It's a lot cheaper if it's not made by Apple. Even the 8GB models are insanely expensive.
Apple makes by far the best laptop out there.
That may be but they're still not worth remotely what they're charging, and the vast majority of people buying them don't need them. They just buy into the ecosystem.
Also cloud computing is a thing. If there's ever anything I need a bunch of power for I run it remotely from my desktop at home or on a cloud VM. And my mediocre desktop will blow the M9 Super Max Ultra Megacruncher out of the water for most tasks.
Only because it's an Apple product. They could have made it stream wirelessly from your MacBook, and make it smaller and lighter, but then you wouldn't have to pay another $3000 for the onboard processors.
They could have made it stream wirelessly from your MacBook
yeah, no. People really don't understand how much bandwidth you actually need to stream even normal 4k 60hz video, let alone something like this. For reference, when I was figuring out how to dump my pc in the basement and have the monitor in my office, I had to run 12-strand fiber cables to do it.
you need about 20 gigabits per second for 4k 60hz. Or more, for higher resolutions and refresh rate - which vision pro has, compared to ~6 gigabits per second, that you need for your quest pro's resolution. That's why they make these.
And having compressed video streaming to a VR device sounds like my worst nightmare.
I've tried several remote desktop apps but the compression artefacts very quickly give me a headache. So I splurged for MTP cables and the display port dongles, and it works like a dream. Also, MTP connectors are pure fibre porn.
Anything corporate produced, hell ya. The creators have already been paid out and the ones getting royalties don't need it to survive. For independent creators that depend on their work to sustain them, then it becomes an a gray issue.
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