Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine

https://www.jorgeherskovic.net/apple-vision-nope/

by jherskovic • 2 years ago

70 204 2 years ago

jorgeherskovic.net

mouzogu4• 2 years ago

"1. It’s uncomfortable"

for AR to be useful, it has to be something seamless, comfortable and easy to integrate into your daily life.

if it's giving you neck pains or eye strains, then as others said, actual reality will always be the better choice.

delichon• 2 years ago

Reality is for people who can't handle AR?

mouzogu4• 2 years ago

Apple promote this as an AR tool. They never use the words VR at all.

AR is augmenting your reality. But if that augmentation includes pain, dizziness and headaches then I would hardly consider that an upgrade.

Maybe they can fix the bulk, battery and comfort issues. Or maybe this is just peak hubris. who knows.

weregiraffe• 2 years ago

seamless, comfortable and easy to integrate into your daily life.

Computer displays aren't any of these either, but we managed to integrate them.

mouzogu4• 2 years ago

computer display doesn't sit on your skull weighing down on your neck.

you just turn it on, very seamless to me.

bowsamic2• 2 years ago

First generation Apple products are always pathfinding devices and they always suck in many ways. The first gen Apple Watch was borderline unusable. I understand people will be pessimistic about this but Apple does have a track record of greatly improving upon the initial experience, so we'll see what happens.

causal9• 2 years ago

That's true. 1, 2 and 4 I could see being solved with a few iterations. 3 ("it's not useful") I'm still struggling with. Apple hasn't really highlighted any use case that's better than the alternatives.

bowsamic2• 2 years ago

I didn't really understand the utility until I watched Casey Neistat's video of using it in public as a portable entertainment experience device. If it gets down to a lower pricepoint I can definitely imagine people using it on public transport and the like to watch netflix on their commute. People will definitely want to use it that way, because that's a totally novel use case. If it gets down to $1000 and is portable enough, you will see people using it extensively in public. I don't think Apple intend for that yet though.

kipchak2• 2 years ago

I think t he difference may be how good the "bones" of the product are to build out on. The original iPhone for example didn't have 3rd party apps (outside Safari pages) or GPS/Navigation, Push Email or 3G that are now core smartphone features, but the experience of scrolling around and opening apps always worked well.

But if it was the reverse and iPhone was unpleasant to use and carry around for long periods of time due to it's physical properties like the vision arguably is, (at least as a "AR" device) I don't know if adding those features later would have saved it.

pryelluw• 2 years ago

Five grand is insane.

causal9• 2 years ago

And probably what most end up paying, or close to it.

What I'm still trying to understand is: what is the use case that Apple thought people would pay that much for? Are people walking around Apple HQ in these things because they are indispensable for some purpose the rest of us have yet to figure out?

Keep3893• 2 years ago

It is for software developers and early adopters. It is small investment for entering into new form factor. Google Glasses had the same problem.

In a few years there may be tons of apps. And apple will drop gimmicks like external displays.

elchief• 2 years ago

I mean, it's less than the original macintosh (which would be 7k today)

AlexandrB• 2 years ago

That's fine if you're selling a niche product:

Sales were strong at its initial release on January 24, 1984, at $2,495 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2022), and reached 70,000 units on May 3, 1984.

I think Apple wants to sell more than 70,000 of these things though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K

pirate787• 2 years ago

That's my thought as well. The price is very fair considering all the tech in it, and historically we paid a lot more for less. My crappy 1997 Fujitsu laptop was $3k in today's dollars.

shrubble• 2 years ago

Not really a fair comparison in that the original Macintosh was competing against systems that were in the same ballpark of pricing. There weren't equivalently specced machines that were 1/7th the price.

GoldenMonkey• 2 years ago

exactly why, I did not complete checkout. sticker shock.

monkmartinez• 2 years ago

This is the most relevant comment. I have the Meta Quest 2 running on a very powerful workstation[0] and its fun for an hour or two every month or so. I get VR sickness sometimes which is really not fun at all. Its actually really fucking terrible. I can fish all day (Ocean or Lake) and not get sick, but these VR headsets can be debilitating.

[0] I was a Macbook Pro user for many, many years until they started soldering everything to the darn MB. Apple is user hostile, imo, to the point that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I strictly buy used workstations (Think Dell 7820's, SuperMicro, etc.) that are a generation or two behind the latest and greatest. TCO is just phenomenal here AND I can upgrade them or downgrade them very easily. A chromebook with internet access is all I need to have my own private, GPU enabled, "datacenter" when I am away from the house. I love my setup and its so gdamn practical that "justification" is not a verb in my vocabulary.

AmVess2• 2 years ago

Apple is going to learn that the hard way.

Meta has huge return rates on their headsets, which is a big reason for their 30 billion loses on it so far.

At $3500, people will play with these Apple units and return them. I can't guess what their return rate will be in terms of numbers, but I know it will be shocking.

SmokeyHamster• 2 years ago

The external cameras kind of suck. It’s a compromise. There are limits imposed by physics.

The other criticisms aren't unsurprising, but I'm curious what he means by this.

The cameras on my Samsung phone are very tiny and still very high res. I'd expect that to be one of the last problems on an Apple device.

ChicagoBoy112• 2 years ago

I'm guessing he means it falls short of "reality". The adds convey the idea as if you are purely looking at the real world around you, but the quality is very much that of a camera -- and he concedes there are some limits to what you could do with that form factor.

wtallis• 2 years ago

Be sure you aren't using photo quality from your phone as your baseline for comparison. Spending the better part of a second on post-processing and enhancements isn't an option for a low-latency video feed.

Also, given how important the cameras are for high-end smartphones, and how damn many cameras the Vision Pro has, it wouldn't surprise me if the Vision Pro's budget per camera is actually less than on a flagship smartphone.

jherskovic5• 2 years ago

OP here. I mean the passthrough cameras, and I mean they suck compared to the expectation of this being "AR, but rendered in VR" (I also have a 'first impressions' post that goes into more detail on this).

They're definitely not as good as the cameras on my iPhone, either.

CubsFan10602• 2 years ago

I think the author is being far too harsh. It most certainly isn't phone quality. It most certainly is a good enough quality to do most tasks. Eating, drinking, making coffee, etc... all work perfectly fine. Fine detail is less good (reading my phone is difficult but not impossible). All things considered, they probably aren't as good as they were sold, but they are still pretty amazing.

alacritas0• 2 years ago

high pixel count != good quality. With all of the smartphone cameras, the sharpness in the details is poor that the image quality is comparable to a mirrorless with half the resolution or less. And then there's low light performance and artifacts which the computational photography introduces

ChicagoBoy112• 2 years ago

One of the challenges is that a lot of his complaints are things that you can EASILY see being addressed -- most other VR headsets benefit from 3rd party straps that make a hugely significant difference in comfort, the app ecosystem hasn't even begun since folks. haven't had a device available, so hopefully there'll be many more use cases, Apple internally already has mirroring of multiple screens, etc. Yet my fear is the quality, speed, and assuredness of these improvements are kinda correlated with how well or how badly the market for this device does. My fear is that it doesn't reach the scale necessary for Apple and others to make the kind of investment in it we'd like to see, and for many years we'll have this go the way of those esoteric Macs of which they might make one or a couple, and leave it at that.

jherskovic5• 2 years ago

OP here. I own a Quest 2 as well. It's a toy compared to the AVP, but it is more comfortable. I agree with your impression - these things will get addressed, but not within the return window, and a $5K gamble that it'll become useful is too rich for my taste.

CubsFan10602• 2 years ago

I think this is right. I think that 6-12 months from now this is going to be a very different story.

FirmwareBurner3• 2 years ago

One of the challenges is that a lot of his complaints are things that you can EASILY see being addressed

I buy and judge a product for what it does RIGHT NOW, not for what I'm hoping the manufacturer could fix down the line, long past the return window. So asking consumers to gamble with 3500+ on what might be, is a tall order.

Maybe Apple should have kept it longer in the oven and not rush to half-bake it, selling what's obviously designed to be a dev-kit, as an end user product using users who paid $3500 as beta testers.

Steve Jobs would be spinning in his urn. He always understood you never release half baked products to consumers.

tw043• 2 years ago

most other VR headsets benefit from 3rd party straps that make a hugely significant difference in comfort

Every other VR headset in question costs a fraction of the price and has sold a multiple of the units. The way their strap interfaces with the headset also appears to be a significantly larger engineering effort than other VR headsets. So basically, you'll be spending multiple hundreds of dollars after having already spent $3500 for the vision pro. That's insanity.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213994

cmiller1• 2 years ago

I'm curious which models you mean by "esoteric Macs"? All I can think of are maybe the cube and the TAM?

jononomo• 2 years ago

Even if this product were lightweight and had a 10-hour battery life and didn’t cause eye strain, I still don’t think it would be an improvement over the real world.

ComputerGuru2• 2 years ago

It depends on how wide open your eyes are. We live in a pretty crappy world if you don't tune out all the horrible stuff. But then again, the kind of person to not tune out that kind of thing without VR is probably not the kind of person to buy into VR in the first place :)

PaulStatezny• 2 years ago

I've never heard of VR/AR being marketed as a solution to tune out the bad parts of reality. Is this a serious take? Are there people who actually buy into that idea?

Using VR/AR for this purpose sounds like it would have the same effects as isolating by scrolling on your phone for hours. It's only a temporary escape, and I bet the depression side effects might be even more intense.

causal9• 2 years ago

The fact that Apple is still using a difference of 256GB storage to jump the price $200 is really funny to me. This is already a wildly premium device, but they just can't resist trying to scrape a little bit more.

paxys5• 2 years ago

Did the $1000 Mac Pro stand and $700 wheels not make that clear already?

jfoster3• 2 years ago

They also skipped headphones or bone conduction on it just to sell more Airpods.

frankus• 2 years ago

By all accounts the built-in speakers are amazing, but tbf not usable if you need privacy or to not annoy people sitting next to you.

jherskovic5• 2 years ago

OP here. What the sibling comment said. The built-in speakers are fantastic, and like many other Apple enthusiasts I own Airpods Pro already as well if I need isolation.

pwthornton• 2 years ago

You do not want a VR headset that requires headphones to operate. That's one more set of batteries to charge. It's one more thing to adjust when switching between users.

The Quest is the same as the AVP. Both have surprisingly good audio. The AVP's built-in audio does a great job. You need headphones if you want privacy, first and foremost. Certain headphones will also enable spatial audio and stuff like that.

But Apple's audio approach here is very sound. It's nothing like the huge upcharge for more storage.

zie4• 2 years ago

I'd argue not to sell more AirPods, I mean sure it's a great extra bonus, but what is the other option you would prefer? that they cover the ears completely like big studio headphones? That they give you a pair of AirPods? Or that they make tethered AirPods? Or Bone Conduction, which means audio quality typically plummets and complicates how the device rests on the cheekbones.

All of those are various compromises that also suck for various reasons.

What about people with hearing issues? Most of these alternatives are terrible for people that wear hearing aids.

jsheard8• 2 years ago

Their storage markups only get more obscene with retail SSD prices continuing to crash.

$800 to upgrade from 256GB to 2TB? A fast 2TB NVMe drive can be had for ~$130.

paxys5• 2 years ago

A fast 2TB NVMe drive can be had for ~$130

Not if the drive is soldered to the motherboard..

FirmwareBurner3• 2 years ago

with retail SSD prices continuing to crash

When was the last time you checked this? SDD prices have skyrocketed back up in the past ~3-5 months as Samsung and SK have reduced production to halt losses. Prices are now back to where they were ~12 months ago. At least in Europe.

ildjarn• 2 years ago

If they are not consistent about this then more people will start asking questions about iPhone storage tiers.

organsnyder• 2 years ago

Why offer different storage SKUs at all? Just include the larger amount and bump the price by $30 or whatever.

AmVess2• 2 years ago

It is absurd that Apple is still charging laughable amounts of money for tiny, inexpensive components. It was somewhat justifiable before when their products were simply better than anything else. Now, everyone else has caught up on quality, and charge vastly less. Even worse, Apple no longer innovates and simply doesn't care about making things that work.

For example, I bought an OLED Windows laptop that was nearly $2000 less than an identically equipped Apple device. Side by side, the Windows unit has better screen and at least equivalent chassis, keyboard, sound, and it has a better touchpad.

I have an iphone, and its primary purpose after being a phone is nav in my cars. 75% failure rate the last 4 trips I tried to use it for. Failure as in black screen. This is on top of Apple's increasingly useless nav that has tried to take me out into the boonies more times than I can count.

Eventually, people are going to tire of being insulted with high prices and subpar products and switch. I'm already there. The days of me paying to fuel Tim Cook's yacht are over.

Apple's headset is so poorly done that it is clear there is deep rot at the top of Apple. When I first saw that absurd front screen, I physically laughed out loud. How anyone at Apple let that through to final product is beyond me. Anyone who brought that crap to Jobs would have been fired on the spot.

samatman3• 2 years ago

Now, everyone else has caught up on quality, and charge vastly less.

This is evidently not true for the Vision widget, which is the topic at hand. The hardware is in a league of its own. I would argue this is also true of the Watch line. I decline to discuss the laptop question, and for phones, sure, if you are ok with paying Apple prices for an Android, you can get one of comparable quality for the same amount of money. Just not for less.

raydev• 2 years ago

The fact that Apple is still using a difference of 256GB storage to jump the price $200 is really funny to me

I've never understood this common opinion. The cost of materials is not a good representation of the manufacturing process, especially since the entire board is built as a unit and not a set of interchangable components.

Have people actually run the numbers on the costs of manufacturing the different variations or are they just comparing against the SSDs they can find on Amazon?

thiago_fm2• 2 years ago

"It’s a V1 Apple product. It’s a new category, for them, and by far the most ambitious headset on the consumer market."

Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors.

Meta Quest 3 is better on everything, despite eye tracking(for a reason, it sucks for many things, I'm sure Meta can have just as good, if they wanted to, but they likely think it isn't a good idea) and the image quality(because it's expensive as hell).

I had much higher expectations. Apple made it clear to me that they've released this device mostly out of fears of phones becoming irrelevant and not having a device to replace it.

Also, to show that Tim isn't resting & vesting his stocks, and both are terrible ways to approach innovation, the kind of innovation Apple used to have with that fruitarian CEO that gave us the iPad, iPhone, iEverything...

Apple needs a new CEO ASAP, Tim is John Sculley, at first sales go up, profits are up, but then after a few years you are stuck and other companies are eating your lunch.

criddell2• 2 years ago

Zuckerberg said yesterday on Instagram that eye tracking is coming back in a future headset.

thiago_fm2• 2 years ago

I don't doubt it will, but I bet Meta knows the limitations and that the controller it has is the best there is, and eye tracking will be used for some purposes.

I was expecting Apple would reinvent that with a concept nobody had imagined before. They didn't. Zero innovation.

Doesn't look like an Apple product to me.

Earpods from Apple was more innovative and had a better factor form than likely this Apple Vision Pro will have in 10 years!

jayd162• 2 years ago

Eye tracking is useful so they'll likely add it back, but he also said it's limiting as the only form of input.

KMnO4• 2 years ago

I genuinely think Apple wanted this to be relatively unpalatable to the typical consumer. They want to build something to prove their tech is the future, but don’t actually want anyone to buy this iteration.

Why? Because they need developers to make worthwhile apps. Yes, the original iPhone shipped without an App Store, but it could also do regular phone stuff (calls, sms, etc). What’s the “regular” stuff you’d expect to do on a VR headset? Other than watch movies on a big screen, there’s currently very little reason to own one, and encouraging everyone’s mom to buy one is setting them up for failure.

Give it a couple years for there to be some really groundbreaking apps, and Apple will open the floodgates with a cheaper/more ergonomic version.

tw043• 2 years ago

Give it a couple years for there to be some really groundbreaking apps, and Apple will open the floodgates with a cheaper/more ergonomic version.

But what are the "ground breaking apps"? The "we just haven't thought of it yet" seems absolutely silly given how long we've had sci-fi novels that have similar ideas and nothing I've ever read in any novel sounded "groundbreaking".

This just screams "3D TV" to me - a solution nobody wants to a problem nobody has. If you could fit all of this into a pair of sunglasses MAYBE there would be a market - but that tech is probably 50 years away if it's possible at all.

symlinkk5• 2 years ago

We’ve had consumer VR headsets on the market for 8 years now (Oculus Rift CV1). Why would apps suddenly start appearing now, what makes Apple so different?

ecf• 2 years ago

I genuinely think Apple wanted this to be relatively unpalatable to the typical consumer.

You’re starting to hit on Apple’s strategy. Build something expensive and impressive, get all the media hype out of it with influencers making content and consumers watching it cause it’s the expensive thing.

Then it comes down in price over 10 years and soon everybody has one, because everyone wants to try to Apple thing they saw so much about years ago.

iPad went exactly the same way, as everyone wrote it off when first introduced as just “a large iPod touch”, and now it’s the defacto leader in the category without anything coming close.

HumblyTossed4• 2 years ago

I genuinely think Apple wanted this to be relatively unpalatable to the typical consumer.

Based on what? Apple cultivates this myth that they wait to enter a market until they can produce the best device in the market. So, I disagree, I think Apple thinks this is the best device they could have built right now and it's for everyone with $3500 to drop on it.

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

I suspect that may be the case (Apple Luggable comes to mind).

The Microsoft HoloLens was $5000, when it first came out. I think that MS pointed it at a commercial target audience.

gigel82• 2 years ago

We've had the Hololens for 8 years (and VR for even longer) and no groundbreaking apps or features showed up. I suspect there simply aren't any.

And there probably won't be any until we get the tech down to just look like regular glasses.

phh• 2 years ago

Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors.

The first iPhone/iOS didn't? It had no apps, no MMS, no 3G

Meta Quest 3 is better on everything, despite eye tracking

Apple is using eye tracking as an UX, so that "despite" is very big. That being said, I don't understand eye tracking UX, it seems to go against human nature to me. (I'm not continuously looking at my HN windows rn while typing this message)

and the image quality(because it's expensive as hell).

There are many things for which even just 15% improvement changed them from interesting to a revolution. LLMs, capacitive touchscreens just to name a few. I could accept that the sames goes for VR

I'm clearly on the side "I see nothing the Apple Vision Pro is good for". The examples I've heard are pretty much "watching youtube while cooking": Well, buy a XREAL Air AR at a tenth of the price, and it'll follow you rather than keeping at a fixed position.

But I can see how the differences between Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro can actually lead to completely different outcomes.

wombat-man2• 2 years ago

iPhone had a way better web browser AND it was a music player. At the time you basically had to have a dedicated mp3 player. So those two things alone were Big at the time.

ecopoesis• 2 years ago

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Apple first-gen products are often half-assed. But they iterate and improve on a regular cadence. The current Apple Vision Pro is a dev kit, it will get better.

hn_throwaway_992• 2 years ago

Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors.

That is an extremely strange view of history. While I don't think other Apple v1 products were "half-assed", they were clearly unfinished, but showed a ton of potential. I think the exact same thing applies to the Vision Pro.

The original iPhone received a lot of complaints about not supporting 3G, not supporting custom native apps, not supporting copy-paste, etc. But the original iPhone was still revolutionary, and I loved my original phone.

Nearly all of the in-depth reviews I've seen of the Vision Pro say essentially the exact same thing: it is a technological marvel, but has a bunch of rough edges, most of which were simply necessary because you can't just, for example, pray super-light batteries into existence.

To emphasize, I think the Vision Pro (and, honestly, many other VR headsets) is largely a solution looking for a problem, and I don't intend to get one, but I think calling it "half assed" compared to other v1 Apple products is a strong misremembering of history.

frizlab• 2 years ago

I think the Vision Pro (and, honestly, many other VR headsets) is largely a solution looking for a problem

For me that’s the biggest issue with the Vision Pro: its lack of usefulness.

neom2• 2 years ago

Steve died 11 years ago and Tim said he tried the first MVP of Vision Pro 10 years ago. Don't think it was his idea, he just brought it to market. I read something recently, I wish I could remember where, but it was an account of why Tim was picked, the product roadmap for many years was basically baked, and Tim just needs to bring it to market, something he is word class at.

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA• 2 years ago

October 5th 2011 was 12 years, 4 months and 6 days ago.

The Vanity Fair article says Tim tried the prototype “years ago; maybe six, seven, or even eight.”

indymike2• 2 years ago

"It’s a V1 Apple product. It’s a new category, for them, and by far the most ambitious headset on the consumer market."

And it is priced out of the consumer market by a factor of 10. Also, the developer program is not interesting.

sircastor3• 2 years ago

Also, the developer program is not interesting.

What does this mean? Most developers I know are interested because of a technology or a product. What does the program need to be doing?

jwells892• 2 years ago

I think Apple has a significant leg up over Meta in the software space, and this shouldn’t be underestimated. visionOS has a proper AR UI framework with affordances for AR/VR usage whereas the Quest is just Android mapped to 3D space.

This will become more of an advantage for Apple as the platform matures because it’ll allow for (for example) automatic adaptations of existing apps for different device form factors, which Meta will not be as well positioned to match with their Android fork, unless they seriously ramp up platform development efforts and significantly diverge from mainline Android.

PaulHoule4• 2 years ago

I thought AVP was just "iOS mapped to 3D space". Apple has been proliferating form factors for many years and has done little on "automatic adaptations of existing apps for different device form factors" so far.

itsoktocry• 2 years ago

Apple made it clear to me that they've released this device mostly out of fears of phones becoming irrelevant and not having a device to replace it.

Wait, people think this thing is going to replace a phone? I can't imagine...

zie4• 2 years ago

I think they have 2 big paths to go down, the current path which is a device mostly for in one spot, mostly solitary use cases. This is certainly the current version of the product. You don't have to take it off for quick conversations or to go potty or get a glass of water, but you absolutely want to take it off to have dinner with someone, spend quality time with people, etc.

The second big path is the it's just a pair of glasses you wear use case, where you just always have it on, since it's literally just a pair of glasses, that can also send information to you, much like what the MIT wearables project has been playing with for decades now.

Will Apple move towards this second future? I don't know, certainly the tech is nowhere near that ability and still be "spatial computing" or AR or whatever you want to call it, but if they can figure out how to shove high-quality digital projections onto a pair of glasses, I can't imagine them ignoring that market, because that is what will replace the phone and probably watch.

runjake• 2 years ago

Apple needs a new CEO ASAP, Tim is John Sculley, at first sales go up, profits are up, but then after a few years you are stuck and other companies are eating your lunch.

I predicted this many years ago, but the evidence I've seen convinces me I was wrong. I really disagreed with their past emphasis on the iPad as a computer at the expense of the Mac, but I feel they've course-corrected since.

Of course, on a long enough time scale you/me are right but I think that timescale extends beyond Tim Cook's retirement, at this point.

What evidence do you have?

PaulHoule4• 2 years ago

An iPad (backed by a big Windows machine) is my "on the go" computing device now.

hbn• 2 years ago

I can't imagine how anyone could think Apple needs a new CEO considering how incredibly they've performed the past few years. And I don't just mean stocks - Google has made stock prices go up for a long time but I think they've tarnished so much of their goodwill at this point that they need to get rid of Sundar.

But Apple? Even putting aside company value, in the past decade they've created the best selling watch on the planet, and arguably still make the only actually good smartwatch (thanks to Google floundering for years - even before Apple got to the market). They kickstarted the true wireless headphones industry with a product line that on its own could be considered an insanely valuable company with how many they sell -- because people love them. They moved all their laptops to custom silicon with incredible performance and battery life that for majority of peoples' computing use-cases completely destroys any reason to buy any other laptop. And young people are becoming more exclusively stuck to the iPhone by the day, almost 90% of American teens use an iPhone now.

I don't know why anyone would want to get rid of Tim Cook.

PaulHoule4• 2 years ago

MQP has eye tracking. In some sense the Oculus Touch controllers are a hassle (two more objects to manage, you have to explain to users which of the 10 buttons they should press, etc.) but the touch controllers let you pick things up, use tools, and otherwise interact with the virtual world with your hands.

samatman3• 2 years ago

Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed

Can't think of an Apple product line in which the first edition wasn't half-assed in some important way. This is something the company is known for, it's a truism. Even the first iPod made significant compromises.

ProfessorLayton2• 2 years ago

Pretty much every product Apple launched before the Vision had a specific use case at launch:

- iPod: 1,000 songs in your pocket

- iPhone: Phone + Internet Communicator + iPod

- iPad: Media consumption device

- Vision: ???

Of course all these products had shortcomings when they first launched, but there was a specific purpose in mind for them in their very first iteration. What the initial devices could do was limited, but what they did, they did better than anything else.

The Vision is missing that initial use case, and it's what makes it feel half-assed.

ubj• 2 years ago

When we price out things in the USA we pretend sales tax doesn’t exist, but it does, hoo boy it does, and most of us pay it.

The price breakdown in this article was probably the most useful part. There was a slim chance I would have considered a product like this for $3700, but $5000 is simply too much for my budget.

dboreham• 2 years ago

Some states don't have sales tax.

testfrequency• 2 years ago

Ok.

Some states have higher sales tax also.

tuatoru2• 2 years ago

NAXALT (not all X are like that) isn't really a useful comment.

tomschlick• 2 years ago

Not only that, but even on the same street you could have varying sales tax from the store 100ft down the road because you are on the border of a city/municipality that has their own tax applied.

There really is no good alternative than to just omit tax and have the customer expect 5-7% typically.

nozzlegear5• 2 years ago

The author's price breakdown matches mine almost identically, and like he said: if it weren't for the 0% financing for 12 months, there's no way I would've swallowed that $5000 pill. I still haven't decided if I'm going to return mine or keep it yet. I find it pretty compelling and I like to write code with it in bed or on the couch, but I can't say it's better than my much cheaper (by comparison) iPad Pro for such things.

fsh2• 2 years ago

I just don't get this obsession with taking on debt. "Financing" doesn't make a product any cheaper. If you can't pay $5000 now, you probably shouldn't buy the product.

elicash3• 2 years ago

On comfort and price:

Apple should have sold the strap separately and partnered with different manufacturers so that 3rd party options were available from Day 1.

For example, this looks less beautiful than Apple's version, but is more comfortable and functional and from what I've read by others, results in a larger FOV (since you can size down on light seal or... remove it): https://twitter.com/Azadux/status/1757469190095781900 -- And that's a hacked together version, not the official version being worked on.

And while Apple would have gotten criticism for nickel and dime-ing folks by them having to buy more stuff separately, I actually think it would have resulted in a cheaper set for folks buying 3rd party. Not enough to put it in a different price category or anything, obviously, but cheaper nevertheless.

rad_gruchalski• 2 years ago

Apple should have sold the strap separately

On the contrary… I can already imagine the backlash against this one „oh, the profiteering, they don’t even sell the strap with it”.

elicash3• 2 years ago

I addressed that point in my original comment, but to add more, they clearly realized that different sized heads and different needs for comfort were such a problem that they bundled it with two different straps (and two different pads). Not to mention the "light seal" fitting issues, which frankly I think they should have partnered on that, as well.

These comfort problems should have been the obvious signal that they shouldn't have done what they do with the watch--which is bundle it with a band.

Between strap and light seal, it's about $500. Why would Apple want to make $500 less? Well, clearly they don't. But I think a $2999 intro price gets a lot more people in the door, even if they then need to buy a $90 3rd party strap. And is more comfortable, too, which is the main point in preventing returns like this one.

jccalhoun• 2 years ago

2.It’s not there yet 3.It’s not useful 4.It’s very expensive

Are any of these surprising? I'm a AR/VR skeptic so maybe I have a more negative view than most but these things seem self evident to me.

xipho• 2 years ago

No, and the author notes exactly this, or conveys the sentiment, but I suppose that's TLDR.

pavon• 2 years ago

It isn't surprising that the software isn't there yet. It is more unexpected that the hardware isn't. While not perfect, other VR headsets do work well for their intended use cases of gaming and video. The Vision has significantly higher resolution than any of them, but it turns out that it still isn't high enough for the use cases Apple had in mind, even after compromising FOV to improve PPD. People have gotten used to using iOS apps at retina quality, and having to either view them blown up or blurry with the Vision isn't a great experience.

bisby• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what level of skepticism you are at. But I will say that AR/VR is already great fun as a toy, and for some people with social issues, it can make situations more comfortable.

It's not just pure nonsense or "not ready for consumers" yet. For people using VR daily, it is entirely good enough for their use cases, and they have useful use cases (even if "useful" means "entertainment").

But I would agree that very very few people need it and trying to get it mainstream where "this is how everyone is consuming media" is a bit outlandish.

irrational• 2 years ago

He talks a few times about looking forward to future generations, but if too many people pass on this generation, will there be future generations? I guess Apple has deep enough pockets that they could fund future generations even if they never make their money back.

rsynnott• 2 years ago

There is no way that this one will cover its costs, or anything like it, and Apple won't be expecting that. It's only barely a product; it's not a million miles away from being a devkit.

Given the cost challenges, if this is ever a proper mass-market consumer product, you're probably looking at at least a few years down the road.

SllX3• 2 years ago

The other usefulness problem is visionOS’ iPad heritage. Maybe a completely locked-down computer for $1,000 is OK, but for a geek who likes to tinker, and at this price? It’s too much of a content consumption device at the moment. I love watching a movie or TV show, but I want to do stuff beyond the walled garden.
$5,013

Man does this really cut to the heart of it. It has a Mac chip, it costs as much as a high end Mac, but it’s an iPad with AR/VR strapped to your face. That’s pretty much what I’ve distilled it down to following all the reviews and discussing it with people. The technology behind that iPad with AR/VR strapped to your face is amazing, but an iPad with AR/VR strapped to your face is still just an iPad.

pcurve• 2 years ago

I agree. Some folks really want this to succeed because we haven't had a breakthrough product for a while and this is beautifully constructed. However, I'm keep reminded of the trash can Mac Pro; it's a totally wrong form factor.

If they can make it less bulky, less heavy, similar to even Magic Leap 2, it would have a wider appeal.

neodymiumphish• 2 years ago

The biggest ick for me is the external battery. And you know this is a problem when Apple works so hard to hide it in their marketing material.

You can’t swap the battery without losing power… Insane

causal9• 2 years ago

I suspect Meta understands its users a little better: If people are gonna strap something to their face, it's because they want to be immersed in some alternate reality.

Right now there just isn't a killer app. But I suspect Generative AI is the path to one- fully immersive, hyper-realistic, real-time generated worlds will be killer, and something only VR can really immerse you in.

OJFord5• 2 years ago

But I suspect Generative AI is the path to one- fully immersive, hyper-realistic, real-time generated worlds will be killer, and something only VR can really immerse you in.

We are nowhere close to that being feasible for anything like as cheap as $5k, the compute requirement would be insane. VR gaming is already intensive, add the inference of 'fully immersive, hyper-realistic, real-time generated worlds'...

ewzimm2• 2 years ago

The worlds themselves don't need to be generated on-device, just rendered there (even as a video stream.) The AIs that will build virtual worlds will live in datacenters and stream to headsets. Local AI will likely focus on predicting movement, upscaling, adding frames, and reducing latency from the source in a similar way that RTX cards do now. I would be very surprised if we don't see online AI-generated virtual worlds before the 2030's.

xyst• 2 years ago

It’s first gen tech. I do agree its usefulness at the moment is not there.

Maybe it’s the lack of apps that take advantage of the tech. Or the overall usability (in this case, significant eye strain/fatigue, heavy headset in the authors point of view m).

I was expecting more augmented reality rather than a simple block of an app and the ability to move it across the 360 view.

Just like the original iPhone. It was far behind the competition but years later it dominated the smart phone market. Albeit, Steve Jobs was the CEO at the time and that probably was a large portion of it. He was just a great salesman.

I can’t say the same for Tim. Great guy, I guess. But hardly memorable.

nmstoker4• 2 years ago

Why on Earth can people return these for non-fault reasons?! It's the other customers who bear the cost to cover this - like indecisive ditzy clothes shoppers who order huge numbers of items knowing they'll return 90% of them.

nmstoker4• 2 years ago

If they're really worried about deterring potential buyers for a high price item, maybe rental could be an option?

nozzlegear5• 2 years ago

Apple's return policy has always been very generous. I often buy their new products to see if I'll like them, and if I don't then I know I can just return them within 14 days for a full refund. It's netted them more than a few sales from me.

OJFord5• 2 years ago

In the UK (and EU maybe?) that's not 'very generous', that's just 'distance selling regulation'. (Though as the name implies it wouldn't be mandatory for in-store purchases.)

Besides, you could buy your Apple products from Amazon instead and get ..I think it's 30?

timvdalen• 2 years ago

Why wouldn't you be able to return anything you buy if it doesn't meet your expectations? It looks like Apple's return window (that's called very generous in a sibling comment) is just the minimum allowed by the law, here.

nmstoker4• 2 years ago

It will vary by jurisdiction but in the UK you can return something if faulty or if not suited for the purpose sold and there are some distance selling protections, but just not liking it isn't generally a valid reason.

I suspect in the US it's more lax but the whole caveat emptor thing is out the window if you can arbitrarily return things - for worn products they won't even be directly resellable.

causal9• 2 years ago

I mean, sometimes people need to try on clothes before they can be sure it will fit? Who exactly are you picturing here when you say "ditzy"?

You act like this is taking money out of others' wallet- imagine how much money shoppers would lose if they had no recourse when a product didn't perform as expected. It doesn't need to be broken to be disappointing, and returns are one of the few tools consumers have to protect themselves from companies that oversell and under-deliver.

nmstoker4• 2 years ago

There's a distinction between mis-selling (where returns are obviously legitimate) and being disappointed.

chankstein38• 2 years ago

For one, Amazon actually encourages that behavior because people are used to trying things on in a store and not buying the things they don't like.

Second, because it's a $5000 thing that was not clearly advertised and was over-marketed to the point where people are disappointed because it's not the magic they were sold. I feel like they'd have sold 0 of them if they didn't offer easy fast refunds.

jherskovic5• 2 years ago

Allow me to quote myself

"Even for a technological tour de force, 5K is a lot of dough. If I used it, and loved it, I’d keep it. But for discomfort, actual eye pain, looking through a periscope, and the inevitable resulting gathering-dust-in-a-corner? I’m not insane. It has to go back. I’m an early adopter, but not a throw-away-5-kilodollars early adopter."

Not all problems become evident in a carefully-curated demo at a well-lit store, either.

zamadatix2• 2 years ago

Beyond the individual return you have to look at how many additional sales this generates (e.g. from the "gee it's nice but I'm not sure I want to bet $5,000 I'll like it 10 days from now" folks) vs the retention rate of these additional sales (e.g. "Well x% do decide to return it because they didn't like it) in combination with your per sale margin and restock costs. I.e. if you just look at the individual return it seems stupid, if you look at the overall sales picture it's often a way to generate more profit.

Or, another way to put it, if it's so certainly causing a loss other customers have to bear why would the company promote the return policy and lose out on that margin from paying customers?

nh2• 2 years ago

When we went to test it in an Apple store a few days ago, Apple staff could not answer product questions such as "does it support WebXR".

The in-person demo of the Vision Pro in the Apple Store is scripted to a few actions and apps that the user is allowed to open under supervision, and nothing else.

E.g. you should not open a website of your choice in Safari.

Apple staff said "we cannot tell you what the device can or cannot do, and we are not allowed to let you try it it out here in the Apple Store; you need to first buy it and try it out at home. If you find it cannot do what you want, you can return it."

With this approach, it makes sense that all returns are accepted.

NarcisMirandes• 2 years ago

This is not a regular product. It's a prototype. The goal is not to sell a lot of units nor compete with existing VR sets.

They probably want: - Get feedback - See how the end consumer use it - See what programmers can built

In other words, it's the Apple version of a MVP. Minimal Viable Product

paxys5• 2 years ago

You don't blanket the entire country in ads for a "prototype" product that you don't intend to sell a lot of.

timeon4• 2 years ago

I'm not fan of this vocabulary, but: its just cope.

"It is not there yet but it will be."

"They just need to make (unspecified) killer app to make it useful."

Sure

HumblyTossed4• 2 years ago

No, it's not. It's an actual product.

badwolf• 2 years ago

https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/

They don't market it as a "developer device" or a "prototype." They are selling this as a consumer product. Watch movies! Look at pics of your family! It's your new giant computer monitor! Facetime with your friends while you're cooking and packing your luggage!

tiltowait• 2 years ago

The AVP feels very much like a product with enormous, as-yet undelivered potential. Anyone not willing to take a gamble and wait it out ought not to be an early adopter. Future generations will reduce or eliminate the pain points, lower the price, etc. For the foreseeable future, I expect that even most people who like it won't use it as much as they hoped.

I'm very bullish on its potential, but I haven't put my money where my mouth is. There are other, more important, more immediately useful things I can and should spend those thousands on. I've been telling myself that if my bonus is at least $4k bigger than I expect, I'll buy one. Truthfully, I'm not sure if I will even at that point. We'll see (hopefully).

HumblyTossed4• 2 years ago

The AVP feels very much like a product with enormous, as-yet undelivered potential. Anyone not willing to take a gamble and wait it out ought not to be an early adopter.

This is Apple. You got all you're going to get. If you want more, you have to wait for AVP2 because they'll either software lock features to it or find some way of having hardware that AVP doesn't and thus can't support new software features.

nodja• 2 years ago

People have been saying that about VR headsets in general, but when I got mine and beat HL:Alyx--which was admittedly pretty fun--the only games I came back to were beat saber and that bow and arrow game in "the lab", I gave a try to a bunch of other games, including NSFW ones, and the magic isn't there, what you get out of it is not worth all the hassle of using a VR headset.

annor• 2 years ago

Weak reasons. One reason is good enough, eyes hurts. Or not fitted. Or whatever.

Is it a keeper if $ was lower, etc. let’s play a game of switching the order of reasons around, reverse and flip it.

Not sure I see an intent to buy and keep it except to try it.

causal9• 2 years ago

I think #3 is a very strong reason. You could ostensibly get over the price, comfort, and quirks if you actually found it useful. Apple seems to be betting that some use-case or app will materialize and change this for them.

paxys5• 2 years ago

Any product that has to be defended by "this is just V1, wait for it to get more mature before it can be useful" is doomed to fail, and this is the most common line in every Vision Pro review I have read.

Every successful Apple product to date has been indispensable from the moment it is first launched. On the other hand if people aren't able to extract value out of a $3500 piece of tech in front of them today then no future version is going to be able to fix that.

SllX3• 2 years ago

Every successful Apple product to date has been indispensable from the moment it is first launched.

Counterpoint: the Apple Watch and AirPods were not indispensable from day one but became very successful product lines for Apple over time. I still wouldn’t call them indispensable (generally at least, I consider my AirPods Pro pretty damn indispensable personally though) and they still consistently bring in billions for Apple per quarter.

However I am not optimistic about Apple Vision Pro. It’s Macintosh money with an iPad’s software distribution model. The iPad could never replace the Mac with that model, and I don’t see these being any more ambitious with what is public knowledge at the moment.

paxys5• 2 years ago

AirPods are the opposite of what you are claiming. They were massively successful from the moment they launched, so much so that Apple has made basically no changes to them over the years and their sales haven't slowed.

j2bax• 2 years ago

After testing one from my office out over the weekend, I think there are people with money to spare that will find this device worth owning for immersive content consumption alone. I found the couple of demo episodes Apple provided to be quite amazing/beautiful/immersive. If Apple is able to get exclusive access to various sports events to capture immersive video in addition to concerts and educational content, there are enough enthusiasts that would think it was worth paying the $3500 entry fee. Content is king! Guess we will see if Apple can make it happen.

bitwize• 2 years ago

The Vision Pro is Apple's new 1984 Mac: costly, near useless, and absolutely at odds with how we use computers today. But it will change the world.

jl6• 2 years ago

I think the $5000 price tag could make sense if it was genuinely good enough to replace a high-quality large external monitor (or several such displays). But as far as I can tell, it is not.

Until then, there are cheaper ways to wear a strap-on.

chx• 2 years ago

This is your regular reminder to read https://disconnect.blog/apples-vision-pro-headset-deserves/

Tech companies want us isolated and constantly staring at screens because it drives profit
the tech industry has been incentivized to push our society in the direction of isolation because it serves their business models.

Even The Verge admitted the Vision Pro is isolating

this is why you shouldn't buy one or if you did, you should return it.

elicash3• 2 years ago

Even The Verge admitted...

The Verge gave weak ratings to the first AirPods and the first Apple Watch. Despite their issues (first version of watch was kinda slow, buggy on 3rd party apps), they were overall great devices. Maybe you agree with me here, maybe you don't, but the point is that the Verge is not somewhere that blindly says whatever new thing Apple creates is amazing.

I am NOT AT ALL arguing this is a good device. I am, however, arguing that talking about the Verge like that isn't warranted.

Also, to add in agreement to your overall point about it being isolating, MKBHD's latest video hits on the same point. So I agree with you, but just think the subtle swipe at the Verge was wrong. It's a great publication, even in the specific instances where I've disagreed with it. (And for AVP, I think they had the best review... which was somewhat negative.)

symlinkk5• 2 years ago

I still can’t believe there is a huge battery attached to it that you have to keep in your pocket. How awkward is that? Meta’s headsets are totally wireless.

mrweasel• 2 years ago

I may be in the minority, but having been disappointed by how the world has been impacted by pretty much all new gadget since, and including, the smart phone, I can't see myself ever getting any VR headset.

Apple might not be the worst, but do companies ever consider the long term negative consequences their business strategies? E.g. I'm never signing up to a social media platform ever again, strictly as a result of Facebooks and Twitters behavior. Knowing how much I struggle to limit the usage of my smart phone, why would I ever get yet another device that will remove me further from the real world?

cerebra• 2 years ago

This was never intended to appeal to broad consumer base. It's a v1, innovative and cutting-edge technology that Apple decided was ready enough to put in the hands of some early adopters and developers. It's priced out of the consumer market range and isn't intended to meet all the goals of a device ready to appeal to the broad consumer base.

They want to get feedback from early adopters and developers to iterate on their software and marketplace, while they continue to drive down weight and cost and refine the hardware side of the device. The expectations for devices right now is pretty high given the decades of development we're accustomed to, but as an early adopter of the first iPhone itself, I remember how limited it was.

If the iPhone v1 was released in the environment we have tooday, it'd be lambasted as being limited. No app store, no app switching, no notification center, etc. It took time and work with developers and users in the real world to start fleshing out the product. Same thing will happen with the Apple Vision.

I can appreciate people reviewing the product and saying it's not for them, it's too heavy, it's not ready for mainstream use - but to me, they simply miss the point. It's a showcase device, only geared to those with money to burn, who are early adopters or developers. It shows a ton of promise, but it will be a generation or two before they fill in the product category under the "Pro" designation, and have an Apple Vision Air, Apple Vision, and Apple Vision Pro, with specs that appeal to broad audiences. It's coming, and their strategy to get the device in the hands of users and get feedback and folks developing on it, is a good one.

faefox• 2 years ago

This product will go the way of the Touch Bar in a couple of years. The original iPhone launched at roughly $742 adjusted for inflation. Apple Vision Pro starts at nearly five times that amount and from what I understand that's not factoring in much if any margin. If that is indeed the case Apple has a long, long road ahead before they can price this thing anywhere near a level where it makes sense for the average consumer or even the above-average enthusiast.

iteratethis• 2 years ago

The same is true for developers.

Creating engaging high quality spatial content/experiences is insanely difficult and expensive. It's something Disney can do, but not 99% of current iOS developers.

hn_throwaway_992• 2 years ago

One thing I just think is interesting re: the complaints about the price. First, I wholeheartedly agree - I can't imagine paying that much for something like this.

But it also highlights how ridiculously cheap consumer electronics have become, and how much our expectations are baked into that. This reviewer paid a total of $5,013, including sales tax, for the Apple Vision Pro. The original Apple IIe, released in 1977, was priced at $12,740 in 2022 dollars for the max RAM model, not including tax.

stephc_int13• 2 years ago

Most people are dreaming of currently-impossible lightweight AR glasses.

I think this is a product trap, trying to skip too many steps.

It is like trying to build a smartphone in the 70s.

They should go for a helmet.

And I don't mean even bulkier ski-goggles, but a real full face helmet, fighter-pilot or biker style. Full of high-tech hardware but balanced in a way that makes it useable for more than 20 minutes.

It is niche, but there is a market for that, the high-end simulation dudes are already forking good money into hardware. And that could also be useful as an actual tool.

From there, they could build the most important part: the software, and slowly improve the form factor.

wombat-man2• 2 years ago

Yeah if I'm using this thing around the house anyway I don't mind.

yashg• 2 years ago

Must feel nice to be able to return opened devices for a full refund. In this part of the world you can only return it if the device had manufacturing defect and that too for a replacement device. Sometimes you can't even return that, you have to contact the manufacturer for warranty.

codelobe• 2 years ago

The endgame in a few generations, ignoring physics, is a pair of eyeglasses

Vuzix AV920 is closer to that, and many years earlier...

I've been using VR since Quake and Descent came out in the 1990's. The tech still isn't there yet. I'm not sure why there's any new buzz over this old-n-busted "Now in 3D" tech from 3 decades ago. I prefer the slimmer form factor of Vuzix's (albeit older) offerings -- I simply WILL NOT strap a toaster oven to my face when I know that I don't have to do that just to get 3D imagery in my face.

Disclaimer: I've been developing a 3D GUI that doesn't use glasses.

Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine

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