Apple's Vision Pro costs big bucks to buy and repair ... just don't mention the box design The old joke among less experienced tech product reviewers is that writing the review starts with opening the box. In the case of Apple's Vision Pro, critics are finding that the, er, box lacks the aestethics that a buyer might expect given the hefty price tag. The box that unites the expensive headset with some pretty …
I have to admit that I still don't get it.
Yes, it's impressive tech, but Microsoft have been plugging away at this in the corporate market for years with Hololens, and mostly what we have are some nice demos in the engineering sector where you look at an engine and it labels all the parts and piping for you. Producing a laminated and ring-bound paper manual is probably cheaper, which is why we're not seeing those everywhere.
Whilst I'm sure that the Vision Pro is incredibly accurate in terms of spatial work - much more so than your phone can manage - the fact is that for most consumer purposes your phone has been able to do "good enough" for over five years now.
Actually, I just went to check, and it turns out that the first version of Apple's ARKit shipped in 2017. Blimey! And remember when some phones had lidar/radar in them to help? The market spoke, that didn't last long...
So all evidence is that, outside of games like Ingress/Pokemon, augmented reality is hardly making a dent in the world.
The most practical and compelling idea for AR was that companies like Ikea could let you use your phone (or Vision Pro?) to see what that bookshelf would really look like in the room. But that's an expensive bit of app development, how many extra bookshelves do they have to sell to recoup it? A branded virtual tape measure app might be a better option!
And that hints at the real issue. Your phone has a better battery life, is more portable, is more useful and generally a better option. So if someone does find a "killer app" for the Vision Pro, they'll want it to work on phones as well so that they can scale it and make more money.
At which point, why would anyone spend three times as much on a Vision Pro when they're more likely to use their phone most of the time anyway?
I guess given Apple's customer base even a small niche would be quite large, but traditionally Apple has not been good at supporting their niche users (Mac Pro anyone?), so this feels more like a vanity project than anything else.
Meh, it depends if the demand is true. It’s a niche product but the Quest proved it’s fairly popular for the middle class American family. AR/VR titles on cheap headset is popular enough to keep Meta pockets happy.
There hasn’t been a real push outside of them into the higher/premium consumer market besides Valve. The HoloLens and Quest Pro focused on enterprise.
It’s the perfect time for Apple to swoop in with their “luxury” brand. Developers have stayed away for now. However with other countries markets willing to deal with inflated pricing just to have it before local release. Developers might get a fire under their ass to start pushing apps to monetize on the potential hype.
Or this can all blow over with returned headsets sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
"And remember when some phones had lidar/radar in them to help? The market spoke, that didn't last long..."
Loads of iPhone and iPad models since 2020 feature LIDAR. You won't find it on Android devices. But then again, you won't find secure facial recognition on those devices either.
"Apple has just 150 apps that were updated for the Vision Pro so plenty of developers aren't customizing their software for the headset,"
Surely a more accurate description is that they HAVEN'T updated their apps yet, not that they aren't going to at all which seems to be the suggestion from that sentence. Presumably it's not necessarily a 5 minute job to update the apps, so would seem more plausible that some are just waiting to see 1) how well the initial sales actually go, and 2) once released, how much demand there is from their own user base.
Well for most apps it doesn't matter. I mean, think about a weather app - is there anything to be gained by porting it to Vision Pro? It will work fine as is, as Vision Pro can run iOS apps they just aren't customized to take advantage of its features (i.e. 3D)
While a 3D weather radar you could fly through and look at storms and view doppler rotations would be cool, I doubt the radar resources weather apps are using provide that level of detail so they couldn't offer it even if they wrote the software to provide the 3D viewing end of things.
While it’s true that the Vision device can run iPad apps, the developer can specifically opt out. And tellingly, both Netflix and YouTube have done just that, as well as saying they won’t be creating a native app.
So unsurprisingly, you won’t be able to stream Apple TV’s competitors content while wearing a Vision Pro. I expect they’ll have a change of heart if those sales numbers go up though.
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