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

ft.com

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

#51

Post by placatedmayhem »

Waterluvian wrote: post #22

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’r…

> 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 feel like the iPhone mini being only two years long is a strong counterpoint to this. There's a small hope for an iPhone 15 mini, but with no 14 mini, it's a long shot. It accounted for 6% of all iPhone sales in it's first quarter, after a delayed and rocky launch.[1] There is a small but somewhat vocal minority that want smaller screens, which Linus Tech Tips' sub-channel Mac Address covered recently. [2]

[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-mini-sales-a-disast... [2] https://youtu.be/BjhiYa0KsSM

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

#52

Post by wahnfrieden »

yieldcrv wrote: post #48
wahnfrieden wrote: post #42

What kind of software, speaking as an independent developer, is going to work well with a market of only some 100k's of users globally? Yikes...

100k rich users though

compared with around 1 billion people with credit cards loaded into an iphone, 100 million macbook users

vision pro apps need to return 1000x-10000x

Leaving only longer term options for devs

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

#53

Post by paxys »

ryanmcdonough wrote: post #46
paxys wrote: post #35

The fact that not a single person wore the Vision Pro or showed off anything other than prerecorded/rendered videos during the keynote should have given everyone a clue about how far along in production it was. Everything about it gave off the vibe of marketing teams overhyping a product and engineering left to pick up the pieces afterwards, which is very unlike how Apple usually works.

They literally had hands on demos for journalists after the event...

Yet not a single one of them was allowed to even take a picture of themselves wearing one. Why was that?

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

#54

Post by hedora »

enraged_camel wrote: post #45
paxys wrote: post #35

The fact that not a single person wore the Vision Pro or showed off anything other than prerecorded/rendered videos during the keynote should have given everyone a clue about how far along in production it was. Everything about it gave off the vibe of marketing teams overhyping a product and engineering left to pick up the pieces afterwards, which is very unlike how Apple usually works.

I don't understand why grossly misinformed comments like this always make it to the top in these threads. Yes, the headset exists and it works. People wore it after the keynote and wrote about the experience.

“Exists and works” is not Apple’s normal bar for a product launch. They routinely ship 100M units in a sales cycle.

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

#55

Post by bananapub »

enraged_camel wrote: post #45
paxys wrote: post #35

The fact that not a single person wore the Vision Pro or showed off anything other than prerecorded/rendered videos during the keynote should have given everyone a clue about how far along in production it was. Everything about it gave off the vibe of marketing teams overhyping a product and engineering left to pick up the pieces afterwards, which is very unlike how Apple usually works.

I don't understand why grossly misinformed comments like this always make it to the top in these threads. Yes, the headset exists and it works. People wore it after the keynote and wrote about the experience.

because the overall vibe of HN isn't about sharing knowledge, it's about showing off by sounding the most confident or cynical or just negative.

most threads are of extremely low value. it is sad, it's significantly worse than even just five years ago.

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

#56

Post by criddell »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #40
MBCook wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

I would absolutely buy this argument were it not for Apple's own portrayal of it during unveiling that shown a person watching movies, which is not commonly a professional role ( as in, it is intended as a consumer product ). That is not to say that I think it is a bad idea. I am not an apple fanboy and I want to get my hands on it if I can convince wife it is not a waste.

Apple recently released Logic Pro and Final Cut for the iPad. It wouldn’t surprise me if that work was done in part to support those apps on the headset at release.

It may have looked like that person in the demo was watching a movie, but maybe they were making a movie…

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

#57

Post by dtx1 »

LegitShady wrote: post #36
dtx1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of so many use cases if it were good. If it were good, you could replace all Displays with it. Games, Movies, Remote Meetings etc. Oh and Porn. So much porn. The problem is the pricetag. It's 10x too expensive for mass adoption and 5x too expensive for developers to bother working for it.

Games - will be available on cheaper a oculus or valve headset you can give to your kids. Movies - same thing, also not worth the headset price. Remote Meetings - why do I want to wear a headset that stops a video of me being recorded? The presentation they had exactly showed that people who didn't wear the headset had video of them and people wearing the headset just had an avatar card. It was the opposite of helpfu…

So you agree with me, there are many usecases for an advance ar/vr device its just

> The problem is the pricetag. It's 10x too expensive for mass adoption and 5x too expensive for developers to bother working for it.

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

#58

Post by cookingrobot »

LegitShady wrote: post #36
dtx1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of so many use cases if it were good. If it were good, you could replace all Displays with it. Games, Movies, Remote Meetings etc. Oh and Porn. So much porn. The problem is the pricetag. It's 10x too expensive for mass adoption and 5x too expensive for developers to bother working for it.

Games - will be available on cheaper a oculus or valve headset you can give to your kids. Movies - same thing, also not worth the headset price. Remote Meetings - why do I want to wear a headset that stops a video of me being recorded? The presentation they had exactly showed that people who didn't wear the headset had video of them and people wearing the headset just had an avatar card. It was the opposite of helpfu…

Apple sells a $6999 monitor. The Vision seems like a very niche, very expensive portable monitor.

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

#59

Post by detourdog »

Waterluvian wrote: post #22

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’r…

I agree. My guess is that they are at fork in production ramp. They need to choose between high production high risk or low production low risk.

If they are 100% certain this is the final form factor they would take one path. If they think we need to get this out in the world and see how it is useful they would take the other.

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

#60

Post by solardev »

turnsout wrote: post #27
RC_ITR wrote: post #8

From the beginning, this product was a very classically Apple strategy of 'let's just take the Next Gen technology, integrate it well, and beat everyone else to market.' Similar to the iPhone 'winning' capacitive touch (or the iPod winning with Toshiba's mini HDD's), Apple plans to 'win' on SOTA hand tracking, camera-based full-color passthrough, face tracking, etc. These are all things that Meta (and the rest) have…

Meta is kind of the Xerox PARC of VR, in that they're doing a lot of great research but utterly failing to productize it. Think for example of their work on virtual avatars [0]. That research is FOUR years old but looks about 1000 times better than Apple's "Personas" from visionOS. But Apple will actually ship. [0]: https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-oculus-codec-avatars-vr...

Lol if that's what their researchers made, how did we end up with disembodied legless wii avatars?
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