Even Apple Wasn't Able To Make VR Headsets Mainstream in 2024 (theverge.com) 119
Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro headset has failed to gain widespread adoption despite advanced technology, with consumers preferring discreet wearables like smartwatches. The Verge: Nearly a year from launch, though, Apple hasn't done enough to demonstrate why the Vision Pro should be a potential showcase of the future of computing. It's taking a long time to put together its immersive content library, and while those are great demonstrations of what's possible, the videos have been short and isolating. There aren't many great games, either.
Yes, Apple keeps adding cool new software features. The wide and ultra widescreen settings for using a Mac display seem exceptionally useful. But those are pretty specific options for pretty specific use cases. There still isn't an immediate, obvious reason to buy a Vision Pro the way there usually is with the company's newest iPhones and Macs. If I bought a Vision Pro today, I wouldn't know what to do with it besides give myself a bigger Mac screen or watch movies, and I don't think either of those are worth the exorbitant price.
Yes, Apple keeps adding cool new software features. The wide and ultra widescreen settings for using a Mac display seem exceptionally useful. But those are pretty specific options for pretty specific use cases. There still isn't an immediate, obvious reason to buy a Vision Pro the way there usually is with the company's newest iPhones and Macs. If I bought a Vision Pro today, I wouldn't know what to do with it besides give myself a bigger Mac screen or watch movies, and I don't think either of those are worth the exorbitant price.
Apple was the dumbest (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple wanted to make VR mainstream, launching a goddamn $3500 device was the dumbest way to go at it.
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Agreed. I remember seeing an ad for this where Apple claimed it was an entire home theater system in one, but at a better price.
Well, actual home theater systems can be shared by more than one person at the same time, and they can keep going after two hours. They also don't make you look stupid or give you a sore neck.
If VR games are what you want, the Meta Quest 3 has this headset beat at a fraction of the price. If AR movie-watching is what you want, well, the Meta Quest 3 can do that too, but so can t
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Not just a $3500 but a massive set of goggles marketed as "AR". They'd be fine if it was marketed as purely VR (but the price would still kill them) but nobody in their right mind is going to wear AR goggles that size in their every day life.
At some point the people pushing this crap are going to realize AR and VR are different concepts and need to be treated and built differently.
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:2)
Not a lot of people want to wear big heavy goggles for VR either...
Re:Apple was the dumbest (Score:4, Insightful)
If Apple wanted to make VR mainstream, launching a goddamn $3500 device was the dumbest way to go at it.
And they're not dumb. Clearly they never expected this to go mainstream at this price.
If Apple knew it was going to sell a 100x as many of these than it has, it could produce the same hardware for a fraction of the price. But until some developer creates a killer app, only a few tinkerers are going to buy it. But no developer is going to develop for this until there are users.
The other way they could go is make it cheaper, but a lot less capable. But we may be at a place where something the average person would look at as a fun money purchase just isn't good enough to support *any* killer app. It's a catch 22.
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:3)
And they're not dumb. Clearly they never expected this to go mainstream at this price.
You make it sound as if they deliberately intended on it having the absurdly high return rate that it ended up with. If they did, then that was an incredibly dumb thing to do.
If Apple knew it was going to sell a 100x as many of these than it has, it could produce the same hardware for a fraction of the price.
If this was even remotely true, the wise thing to do would have been to sell it as a loss leader while they lower the production costs.
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And they're not dumb. Clearly they never expected this to go mainstream at this price.
You make it sound as if they deliberately intended on it having the absurdly high return rate that it ended up with. If they did, then that was an incredibly dumb thing to do.
The absurdly high return rate, IMO, was largely the fault of Apple's in-store demos being deliberately tailored to limit what users can do so that they wouldn't see how limited it really is. Unsurprisingly, when you have decent return policies, this ends up being a losing strategy.
Apple reportedly expected a million units sold in the first year, and reportedly got somewhere between a quarter and half of that number—probably closer to the former than the latter. They didn't expect it to take off, but
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:2)
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Sure, there is. Meta seems to be pumping out a ton of cheaper Meta Quest VR headsets, which cost between $300 and $1,000 but have much poorer video quality.
What really seems to be missing at this point is the "killer" VR app that really lets Apple show off that extra processing power and screen resolution.
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:4, Informative)
Iâ(TM)m sure we are going to see cheaper and refined versions of Vision in the coming years, and those are the ones they have the potential to take off.
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised how few people seem to get this.
Everyone is so quick and smug with how stupid Apple is for thinking this heavy $3500 device will become a household item.
Love the basement dwelling neckbeards who think they're smarter than a company with a 50-year track record of creating entire product categories.
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Go away now.
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If Apple knew it was going to sell a 100x as many of these than it has, it could produce the same hardware for a fraction of the price.
Sometimes you HAVE to take that risk and assume that it will sell that many at the risk of losing money if your business plan fails.
until some developer creates a killer app, only a few tinkerers are going to buy it.
There is about Zero point in investing your time and resources as a developer into building any kind of app for a piece of hardware at that pricepoint.
If Apple
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Apple has fans that would spend $100 on a rock with a painted Apple logo on it. Note that there was the "Pet Rock" in the 1970s that showcases just how stupid the general public really is.
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Nonsense, you are thinking of Apple 20 years ago. Just because you cannot figure out why you would buy an Apple product, you figure everyone who does must have Apple colored glasses.
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:2)
Sorry reality proved you wrong.
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The Apple silicon devices are pretty great. The price point is crazy on the adequately-spec'd examples, but it's tough to beat the keyboard, battery life, or the performance.
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Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:2)
Reality doesn't make sense, must be a problem with reality not your perception. /eyeroll
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:2)
What is beta about it? It's absurdly expensive but absurdly refined. It can definitely be lighter, with longer battery life and cheaper, but you can say that about anything.
It's like calling an electric formula car beta because it's too heavy... what would you do to better refine it besides time travel to the future and bring back better battery tech and lighter more efficient processors.
IDK, they sure can be improved but beta is a really dumb way of looking at them.
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Absurdly expensive but not refined at all. I got to try it soon after it launched before returning it, and it did not even integrate with your other Apple devices in general. As in you couldn't share data between your iPhone and your vision pro. Heck you couldn't even read messages received on the iPhone from the vision pro. Many examples of how the product simply wasn't refined.
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The cross-device integration is better now.
I'd buy one if it were half the price and half the weight.
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Things about it that were not refined:
1. How it sits on the head and weight balance. Apple later tried to address the problems with a different strap, but weight balance proved unsolvable.
2. Interface is awful. It sound cool, and it's interesting for a first hour, and then it's problems become glaring.
3. Battery. The wire gets stuck everywhere. Only about 2 hours operation, and no ability to actually connect the battery to a charger while it's connected to the headset to enable constant operation while sitt
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If Apple wanted to make VR mainstream, launching a goddamn $3500 device was the dumbest way to go at it.
Not just the price-point, but that price-point with *NO* wow factor apps available. Not at launch. And not now. It's almost like they decided to do everything possible to make it fail, so it's not surprising that it's failing.
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There is nothing wrong with this headset other than the price point.
When people still regard VR and AR as stupid, you have to also realize that the Vision Pro was equal to buying 16 VR trackers ($1000 USD cost based on the price of the SlimeVR) as well as the HMD ($1500) and the computer to run it ($1599.) It was just not going to work. What they (Apple) should have done was found a way to make the MacMini the "computer" for this unit, thus saving half the engineering cost. Nobody wants to plop down that mu
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Nobody expects these things to last years. At the price point it is at, it needs to last years.
Call me when the decision is between a $300 monitor and a $300 heads-up, and both will last 5 years. The VR stuff is pretty much irrelevant.
Can't bury the price within a monthly phone bill. (Score:2)
Re: Apple was the dumbest (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say the same about Tesla's launching a $100,000 performance car to make EVs mainstream. Do you not understand the strategy? The Vision _Pro_ wasn't ever intended to be the model for everyone. Personally, I thought the name and the price made that obvious, but god damn some people are stupid.
Like crying about Mac Pros being too expensive to play Fortnite. You drink leaded coffee this morning?
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they never intended it to be mainstream.
don't underestimate apple customers. apple sold out the initial batch in 18 minutes, 200k units on preorder in 2 weeks. because apple. people didn't even know what they were buying. they sold almost half a million units before people found out that the damn thing is a quite useless overengineered tech demo gimmick. unrecoverable apple fanbois still today believe it has a future while the already obsolete gadgets gather dust on shelves or on ebay.
mind you, i think appl
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they never intended it to be mainstream.
don't underestimate apple customers. apple sold out the initial batch in 18 minutes, 200k units on preorder in 2 weeks. because apple. people didn't even know what they were buying. they sold almost half a million units before people found out that the damn thing is a quite useless overengineered tech demo gimmick.
I don't think those numbers are correct. I've heard more like 224,000 for the whole year. [arinsider.co] Either way, they massively missed their target of one million units sold.
Here's where Apple went horribly wrong:
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As far as apps working with it, it should be out of both Apple and the app developers hands. The users should always be allowed to try. Full stop.
Yes, in theory. In practice, yes, but that's still only half of the story.
I suspect, based solely on how many apps don't have visionOS support and not on any deep analysis of the APIs (which I just don't care enough to bother with), that Apple will have to make its gesture support a lot more feature-rich to get close enough to the "virtual touch" capabilities that would be a hard requirement for a significant percentage of iOS games and other apps to be fully usable as-is without developers having to do ex
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"the dumbest way to go at it."
Is that really dumber than Meta whose version is ~$10,000 and won't even be ready for mass production for years?
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My theory: This was a warning shot. "See what we're doing? See how many we sold? By the time you release your first generation unit we'll have our second one ready. So you might want to not put out anything and leave the market to us."
Also, anyone else curious to see how much these are gonna cost once they hit Apple's refurb page?
Re: Then obviously Apple is not the dumb one here. (Score:2)
How trippy. It's like that show Overlord, only Tim Cook is Ainz Ooal Gown and you're one of his dumb minions that always assume that his decisions are always the correct ones because he's incapable of making mistakes, so you come up with these bizarre explanations to misinform the lesser minions.
"Even Apple???" (Score:4, Informative)
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The tone of this headline makes it sound like Apple was somehow expected to succeed in this. I'm surprised that the submitter was surprised.
Apple fanboy surprised at thing no-one else is surprised at... News at 11.
Seriously, VR is a gimmick, to make it work you need a headset cheap enough that people won't think too hard about buying it (say sub US$300), then it needs to run on their existing gear (PC/Console/Switch) and finally it needs to have some games for it. This is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario as you need to have the device existing before people will write games for it but people won't buy it in large numbers unless there are
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Like many people I have a Logitech G29 racing wheel that I use once every few months on 2-3 games that are compatible with it... I bought it because it works on my existing gaming PC (also on a Playstation, I bought the PS version over the Xbox because the PS version has 2 more buttons and was $20 cheaper), Logitech helps developers make their games compatible and it was cheap enough that I could say "bugger it, I'll buy that as a toy". You want us to buy VR headsets, it needs to be like my Logitech G29 racing wheel (other racing wheels are available).
I should have clarified "the 2-3 games that I own which are compatible with it"...
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Meta seems to be selling a ton of Meta Quest 3 headsets. Enough of them to make Meta Horizon app needed to set them up to become the #1 free app in the iOS App Store this week.
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I wonder how many of them are going back in the box once Christmas is over, never to be pulled out again.
There are probably still hardcore sim gamers, telesurgeons, Space Force pilots, furries, and people with MacRumors in their bookmarks who haven't bought one yet. They're waiting for it to go on clearance - though I'd be concerned with Apple planning obsolescence into these things, or otherwise impeding resale.
Normal people though, "mainstream"? No, never. Apple wasn't even aiming at that, not with this m
No killer app (Score:5, Insightful)
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VR has nothing compelling to a wide audience.
Apple AR has nothing compelling to a wide audience. VR itself is doing very well, but Apple will have to change its behavior if it wants to compete. The Quest won the "wow!" stage, and the Vision Pro has nothing worth $3,500 to one-up the Quest.
Everything the Vision Pro has, the Quest already had. The ONLY place the Vision Pro was at all competitive was in the screen, But it wasn't $3,500 competitive. If Apple can get the price to drop $2,900 - $3,000, then we can talk about future competition.
The Quests c
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VR porn seems to be big business, but you only need a cheap headset for that.
Apple didn't really fail at VR, which is fairly cheap now. They made an AR headset that costs 20x as much, and there aren't any killer apps for that.
What' the killer app? (Score:3)
I think a pared back version of the Apple Vision Pro will win the day because people are far more likely to pay for an immersive experience in their spare time than they are to pay for something that is pestering them incessantly as they go about their daily lives. Yes, the Vision Pro looks ridiculous, but people aren't wearing it public. In contrast, it is hard to imagine that anyone would want to be fed to the Meta face recognition algorithms and geo-tagged by the Meta glasses. This is, after all, Meta's business model: sell people's personal data. It is unlikely that those wearing meta glasses will put up with any ads being thrust in their pupils. So, the devices will be trawling data from all the places that the wearer goes. The Meta glasses are nothing but a surveillance device, and in short order corporations, bars, and other privately owned spaces will issue rules banning the wearing of these devices on premises.
That is, if those donning the Meta glasses don't get punched out first.
Re: What' the killer app? (Score:2)
Re: What' the killer app? (Score:2)
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The AR killer app is a contextual dashboard for the world.
Get in your car. It's your car dashboard. Including GPS and backup camera.
Sit down at your desk, it's your computer display.
Sit on your couch, it's your television.
Pick up a game controller. It's you game console display.
Look at a barcode, it does instant review and price comparisons after looking up the product.
Look at a face, it gives you name, relationship, and related task/checklist reminders.
Look at the sky, it becomes a personal planetarium.
Th
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Pay the real cost of the hardware, run it with FOSS.
It'll happen. But the future you see will come first and dominate.
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More solutions in need of a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the 3D TV all over again. Marketers keep bringing this stuff back, 3D, VR, virtual assistants, etc, and by now a competent marketer should understand that they don't resolve a pain point. All you can do is try to create a pain point through hostile messaging and hope that people will buy it.
Otherwise it's a product that exists in concert with the Monster cable market, ie: people with more money than sense, and that is the antithesis of widespread adoption.
It doesn't even have a proper military application. That's where most of the useful tech comes from. A less robust product that solved a military problem.
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Otherwise it's a product that exists in concert with the Monster cable market, ie: people with more money than sense
A Monster cable provides no added value.
3DTV provides less added value than 3D movies in the theater.
VR provides incredible experiences nothing else can provide.
Ask flightsimmers and racers who have tried VR. They're not going back. There is also boxing in VR, which in itself is a killer app for any martial artist who wants to train at home.
Apart from the natural interaction and huge field of view, the sense of actually "being there" with VR is insane, even with just meager low-res graphics.
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VR provides incredible experiences nothing else can provide.
maybe. Though it is more VR providers an incredible experience very few give a damn about or want. Very similar to 3D TV's
If you didn't want people saying strap it on.... (Score:3)
you shouldn't have put a strap on it.
No, Apple Didn't Try to Make a Mainstream Headset (Score:2)
Apple fails at first, then goes on to succeed (Score:4, Interesting)
The Newton failed.
However in the long term Macs and iPhone/iPad became successful.
Give Apple time to continue working on VR.
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The Mac was introduced in 1984, and Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985. There was not much time for him to have the Mac succeed. I would call your take quite tendentious.
Let's rephrase then. The Mac as Jobs 1.0 designed it was a failure. It was not until Jobs lost control of the project, and design elements he had rejected were introduced, did it become profitable.
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Mac succeeded when it became more Apple II like (Score:3)
The Mac wasnt supposed to be what they pushed it as. It was supposed to be their lower-tier business machine. They were forced to stop development on the IIgs, so the mac had to take its place.
The Apple II paid the bills at Apple for the entirety of the Jobs designed Macs, these Macs lost money. When Apple redesigned the Mac, introducing features that Jobs refused, like Wozniak's suggestion for a more open architecture with slots, then the Mac was successful.
Look at the Mac II:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A case that opened like the Apple II.
A motherboard with slots like the Apple II.
A separate monitor like the Apple II.
An option for a color monitor like the Apple II.
The Mac beca
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First, the Mac 128K sold about 250,000 units in the first year. I won't call this a failure. Second, the Mac 512K came out in the same year 1984, so still unter Steve Jobs's watch.
The Apple II paid the bills at Apple for the entirety of the Jobs designed Macs, his Macs lost money. When Apple redesigned the Mac, introducing features that Jobs refused, like Wozniak's suggestion for a more open architecture with slots, then the Mac was successful.
Look at the Mac II:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A case that opened like the Apple II.
A motherboard with slots like the Apple II.
A separate monitor like the Apple II.
An option for a color monitor like the Apple II.
The Mac became
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The Apple was a pretty big hit. Yes, all the computers after that played second fiddle - some less than others.
But it seems to me that the iPod, iPhone, and iPad have all been quite successful. And the Apple watch has, as well. And all of them were successful right out of the gate.
This seems like the first product launch in 20 years that really didn't live up to expectations. Am I missing any?
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(Oh, I guess the Apple TV never hit as big as Apple would have liked)
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I mostly tune out Apple product launches, but I did hear quite a bit of complaining about the Macbook keyboard and lack of RAM in recent years. I recently got to try one of those keyboards on a client's Macbook... and it was worse than I expected. The closest thing I can compare it to is this [media-amazon.com].
I do also seem to be hearing, on an annual basis now, people disappointed with the new iPhone release. Along the lines of, "It doesn't do anything the last 5 phones didn't do. It still costs the same. Isn't technology
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But the apple apologists will keep bringing up inflation and how the original mac was about $1million dollars in today's money after adjusting for inflation.
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But it seems to me that the iPod, iPhone, and iPad have all been quite successful.
True, but they are Apple's second attempt at hand held devices. Hence my reference to the Apple Newton, Apple's first attempt.
And the Apple watch has, as well.
It's really a peripheral for the iPhone. Not a standalone thing yet. I expect it will get there. But I think Apple will need a couple more medical sensors for the watch to become a standalone big success.
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It's not a replacement for everything on the compute desktop.
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THAT was supposed to be their home computer future, but they lost the lawsuit with the beatles.. so they pushed the mac as a home computer, and eliminated all music-related abilities (what the IIgs shined at, significantly better than Amiga) in their future product lineup.
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During the same period, there was another Apple system... the Apple IIgs...
The older Apple //e paid the bills for Apple, for both the Mac and IIgs. The //e was still sold when the IIgs was discontinued. When did the Mac become successful? After it became more Applie //e like. Open architecture with slots, separate monitor, color support, etc. Whey get a IIgs when you can get a Macintosh II? or one of its successors? Apple was on it 6th Mac II model when the IIgs was discontinued, its 8th when the //e was discontinued. The Mac LC line was a couple years old and the Quadra line had
VR will never be good enough (Score:2)
VR can't replace the real world. You can fool eyes and ears, but you can't realistically mimic force or motion. A nice large display is still better than VR for long term game use.
AR, on the other hand, could be revolutionary if they can get it right. Not for gaming, but for everything else. And then a bit of gaming, too.
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Exactly. To flesh out your idea a little further, VR won't take off until it's like the holodeck on Start Trek. How do I run across a huge hallway or field, that I might see in the latest FPS game, if I live in an apartment?
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VR can't replace the real world. You can fool eyes and ears, but you can't realistically mimic force or motion.
There is GVS but it still needs development I'm not sure how controllable or practical it can be as a mass market product. The thing about motion to keep in mind you only have to deal with changes so issues can be minimized by concealing or minimizing changes in direction or velocity.
My personal view VR would be 100x better with some kind of cheap walking solution. Hell even walking in place would be acceptable. Anything that isn't goddamn teleport system or the equally idiotic move where you are looking
Apple is on track (Score:2)
Was the iPhone mainstream first year?
No.
Was the iPod mainstream first year?
No.
Was the iPad mainstream first year?
No.
Apple does not make new technologies mainstream in a year. They know it takes time. The reason they are able to take technologies mainstream, is because they are willing to spend 5-10 years making it happen.
Come back in five years and see where things are at. Claiming Apple hasn't made an expensive and cumbersome technology mainstream in a year is absurd.
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Was the iPhone mainstream first year?
No.
Was the iPod mainstream first year?
No.
Was the iPad mainstream first year?
No.
Apple does not make new technologies mainstream in a year. They know it takes time. The reason they are able to take technologies mainstream, is because they are willing to spend 5-10 years making it happen.
Come back in five years and see where things are at. Claiming Apple hasn't made an expensive and cumbersome technology mainstream in a year is absurd.
Wikipedia says of the iPhone:
In its first week, Apple had sold 270,000 iPhones domestically.[42] Apple sold the one millionth iPhone 74 days after the release.[43] Apple reported in January 2008 that four million were sold.[44] As of Q4 2007, strong iPhone sales put Apple no. 2 in U.S. smartphone vendors, behind Research In Motion and ahead of all Windows Mobile vendors.[45]
The iPod was not an immediate hit - but I don't think sales ever fell quarter over quarter (until the death knell of non-phone music pl
Two big problems (Score:2)
VR headsets still have problems. Even with today's tech, they are still annoying to use for more than a few minutes, or maybe hours. Human minds and eyeballs have had a long time to learn how to process reality and VR headsets are different enough that they cause headaches and disorientation.
We don't have a really good use for them. Yeah, there are some things that they can be used for, but nothing that's really great.
It was not a VR headset ... (Score:2)
It wasn't even an AR headset, it was a spatial computing headset.
This is called Apple marketing. (Score:2)
Personally, I'm glad that Apple is in the market now, the more the merrier. Competition is always good. And hopefully they come around to adopting OpenXR like the rest.
Mainstream ? (Score:2)
At 3500 bucks if that was the plan it's stupid.
Not everyone's a millionnaire.
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The problem was Tim was trying to recoup all r&d cost in year 1.
What a joke (Score:2)
We used to have 3D TVs that cost five times less, and they turned out to be an abject failure. It's sort of an apples to oranges comparison, except they both give you 3D and sort of serve the same purpose.
What makes people think that anything that costs that much can become mainstream? You can buy a used car for that money for Christ's sake!
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Every 3D TV and movie at the theater that I've viewed, has always been to some degree gimmicky and always hit or miss on the 3D. This is not the case for VR, not with
Wow, who would ever have thought? (Score:2)
A $3500 piece of hardware with NO break through software?
Everyone must want one of those. They must redesign them to look good on a shelf and sales will pick up astronomically.
Turns out the Apple hype box wasn't enough to take this piece of hardware over the adoption line. While everyone still wants an Apple phone or Apple watch, that status doesn't seem to be given to VR, probably because no one sees you with one.
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probably because no one sees you with one
Yep. If nobody can see you wearing it, it's not much of a status symbol.
A solution looking for a problem... (Score:2)
The Apple headset is well built, and it does what it does quite well.
However, what has kept it, and every other 3D headset back to the Nintendo Virtual Boy, was applications.
Nobody has time to add time for another screen in their lives. One can use the virtual headset to replace a monitor, and maybe play Beat Saber, but real applications? None really.
Smartphones had social media and apps for virtually anything, which got people from RAZRs to iPhones. Computers had applications which greatly helped produc
Usually mainstream devices (Score:2)
Are cheap enough for the average consumer to buy, 3500$ is a little steep for a device that is a luxury item and doesn't add that much value to your life
I didn't get one either, but they did good work (Score:2)
It's not everyone's everything yet,
but Apple brought some better ideas to the VR face huggers.
Meta treated it like a phone. Run an app, exit, go dark, run another.
Apple had the idea to always keep you in a coherent environment.
Not throw you in the dark void when you switch tasks.
That's an important step in making these things work,
and other VR devices missed that, and it's difficult to do right.
What Apple needs to "succeed" is a shared realtime generative AI environment.
We can't model and texture and mocap
VR is a solution looking for a problem (Score:2)
Better alternatives for the most common use. (Score:2)
The closest thing to a "killer app" it had was using it as a monitor for the giant desktop or watching regular movies. Unfortunately for Apple, you can also get video display glasses which perform the same function that are, admittedly not as nice, but still good quality for about 10% of the cost and, more importantly, about 10% of the weight.
Make it mainstream? (Score:2)
When so many people are complaining about the cost of food, a $3500 headset?
My 24" monitor, several years ago, was well under $200.
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In fact, Vision Pro is very successful in raising productivity of a demographic
What demographic?