this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Oh. My. Goodness.
$3,500?!? HAHAHAHAHAHA
It is not meant for the end consumer at this stage, it is a tech demo and development kit.
The real consumer variant will probably be released in a year or two.
It should be marketed as a dev kit, but they're marketing it for consumers
Well, why not capture some consumers at the same time?
This very article says that Apple is pushing it onto "walk-in" consumers.
So?
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.
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...
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?
At best this may help scaling up production of the necessary components (in particular the displays)
Well it is Apple, they sell status more than anything else.
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.
So... I can't buy it? If I can, you're either lying, wrong, or have an agenda.
If you can afford it you can buy it, the purpose of a product does not need to affect availablility.
Why go straight into calling me a liar? This just shows that you don't want to have a proper discussion.
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.
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.
I’d buy it if it was the kind of tool that earned me $5000… but it’s still really hard to justify the business use case for VR these days.
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.
Also it's too heavy to wear comfortably for long sessions
Drone pilot?
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!
The battery pack is literally just USB c.
Not impossible, just impossible to afford
Have you heard of the Apple Cheesegrater?
Shit I've bought MacBooks for work that cost as much as that headset, and my current laptop costs about as much as this.
$3500 is nothing for a computer, let alone a prosumery AR/VR heatset with a computer built in.
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.
And I thought Apple consumers were out-of-touch!
A lot of tech, including computers, commonly cost that much for a long time. It's not a totally outrageous for consumer tech.
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.
Parsec?
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.
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.
Wifi 7 has a peak rate of 40 Gbps.
Maybe it does, and it still would (probably) not be enough for two 4k 90hz displays that this has.
And is nowhere in any consumer product today. How is it relevant to this discussion?