Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

I am very pessimistic about the future of VR beyond it being super nice for niche cases. But I think there’s something fundamentally good about:

1) Apple taking a stab at it, because it’s the kind of thing where UX really matters and Apple does UX well.

2) Apple not being trapped in the “if we can’t sell a billion of them then why even bother?” mindset that so many other companies get trapped in, often because they’re not bursting at the seams with cash, talent, and runway.

I think 3rd party developers are largely irrelevant for it’s initial success. It’s like the original iPhone, if the hardware and built in apps are compelling then people will buy it which will eventually create an ecosystem.

That’s IMO why VR has largely failed, out of the box there hasn’t been a compelling reason to get one and there isn’t enough software to keep people interested.

The Vision Pro looks like a lot of fun but I'm not sure what the use case is.

Unlike the iPhone, this is clearly an indoor device, not an AR system to navigate around town.

It seems a much more immersive desktop experience, but are you really going to be more productive using AR than a 4k monitor or two? Maybe so, but I wouldn't take that for granted until people start actually using these for work.

It does seem like it has a lot to offer for gaming. That isn't Apple's traditional market, but it could be the direction they're going in.

“Out there” for who?

Apple has customers who will buy multiple $15,000 configuration Mac Pros without batting an eye. That’s the price of the tool and for what they’re working on (perhaps a $250,000,000 movie) it’s justified.

The Vision Pro, as announced, clearly isn’t much of a consumer product. The price is too high. But that’s not surprising, it does have ‘Pro’ in the name.

When the Vision or Vision Air. come out in a few years for $1000-$1500, that will be the (higher end) consumer move. And by then software will exist.

For now it seems more for executives. Maybe travelers. On The Talk Show Gruber and Panzarino were talking about how useful it would be for working on secret designs or private financial information or HIPAA information in public. You could be in an airline seat or at Starbucks or whatever and work on the information without anyone else being able to see it, unlike a laptop screen.

And it’s not hard to imagine how it might be very useful to architects or certain other businesses that might be willing to spend the money for an expensive tool to buy expensive software if it really helped them out.

I don’t think Apple will have problems selling them, even at $3500. Is it the next iPod? No.

But right now, they have got to be 109% constrained on those insane displays. Nothing else in the headset seems anywhere near as hard to manufacture.

Talk about brain dead. Here is a product but it can't be mass produced.