My feeling is that Apple went entirely the wrong way here. They made an expensive device that doesn't meaningfully move the needle on AR/VR or AR/VR UX. As a result, they've narrowed the market so much that they can't convince app developers (who they've spent the last few years alienating) to develop for it, and are cannibalizing future sales (to Nilay Patel's point) by convincing people that a lot of these technologies (vision tracking, passthrough) are cul-de-sacs.
If they'd made something like "Vision Air" that was essentially Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses plus AR for $999 they'd sell millions, they'd have a market for app developers, they'd convince people there was a point to having them. That's an actual interesting product and it's closer to where they want to be anyway.
This feels broadly like a staff retention project, or some kind of market positioning strategy or supply chain capture strategy or something. I just can't believe this product was the point of all the time, effort, and money Apple spent on it.
This is generally true of most of the product line... the iPod Nano / Shuffle were very popular but not the first iPod, the Watch is popular now, but the first one wasn't a all that, same with AirPods, and of course the iPhone itself. Apple has visibility into the Vision Air, and the Pro 2 & 3 and maybe 4 as well, so I'm curious to see where in are in 3 years or iterations.
TL;DR: I'll be super surprised if this thing makes any dent in tech/culture whatsoever. It's way too expensive (we're not too far out from used car territory here [0]) and breaks no meaningful new ground.
Eh I think there are a couple of important differences.
The first difference is that the iPhone wasn't 300% the price of the contemporary Nokia N95. It was actually around 30% cheaper ($500 vs. $730). The Vision Pro is $3,500 and its closest competition is the Quest Pro at $1,200. I don't think anyone would argue that the experience justifies the price difference.
The second difference is that the iPhone foretold how people were going to use phones in the future. The technology was good and convincing enough that it--to my sorrow--killed other ideas instantly. The Vision Pro obviously hasn't done this. People are buying the state of the art when they buy the Vision Pro, but people were buying the future when they bought the iPhone, and everyone knows it.
And I mean, inventing the future is a bonkers high bar. I admit we shouldn't be holding any company--including Apple--to that standard. It was a confluence of a talented, experienced team, world events, and technological progress. I'm saying I find it hard to square the fact that buying the future (the iPhone) cost less than the then state of the art, whereas Apple's clearly not created the future here, and priced it way out of bounds. It would be like if the iPhone ran the best version of Symbian and had the best resisitive touch screen or physical keyboard that could possibly be made, and then they sold it for $2k. We wouldn't even be talking about this product as a real product if it weren't Apple selling it. We'd assume only rich people would buy it and it would impact the culture not at all.
Also, that's what's happening! Well, that's the best case. The probable actual outcome is people not only get used to the idea that AR/VR has hit a ceiling and is really expensive, but a few really obnoxious people wear the Vision Pro to cafes and everyone gets the idea that it's extremely uncool. This thing is at best a dev kit and at worst a bauble.
> The second difference is that the iPhone foretold how people were going to use phones in the future.
I don't know if I buy that. Watch the original iPhone announcement. Steve spent most of the time talking about what a great phone it was and how much better voicemail is. Connecting to the internet was tacked on to the end of the presentation.
"Now, what’s the killer app?
The killer app is making calls!"
I don't think that's foretelling how people were going to use phones in the future.
Nah. I'm rewatching and they have the whole "breakthrough internet communicator" thing right at the top, and he makes fun of existing smartphones for only having the "baby internet". Also there weren't apps at first, the whole thing was supposed to use web apps (Carmack famously gave Jobs the hard sell on apps).
But aside from all that, the point was the UX. There's the whole "smartphones are hard to use" angle which was really the raison d'etre for the whole thing. And now? Phones work like the iPhone worked.
If they'd made something like "Vision Air" that was essentially Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses plus AR for $999 they'd sell millions, they'd have a market for app developers, they'd convince people there was a point to having them. That's an actual interesting product and it's closer to where they want to be anyway.
This feels broadly like a staff retention project, or some kind of market positioning strategy or supply chain capture strategy or something. I just can't believe this product was the point of all the time, effort, and money Apple spent on it.