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

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

#231

Post by scarface_74 »

rchaud wrote: post #179
turnsout wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I disagree with the premise—plenty of Android users buy AirPods. But putting that aside, why does the success of AirPods invalidate the point that Vision Pro could be successful without being as big as the iPhone?

Airpods are an existing product category (headphones) that everybody with a phone already uses. Couple that with Apple products being a status symbol, advertised everywhere, and it's not hard to see how Airpods could succeed even at a $200-ish price point. As for AVP, it is a brand new category where the use cases are yet to be identified. It costs 2 months' rent, it has no killer apps that people are going to line u…

Not the “Apple products are status symbols” canard.

How is something a “status symbol” if it has a 60% market share in the case of phones?

Any teenager working at McDonalds can buy an iPhone on 2 year contract or get one “free” with a contract from one of the low end MVNOs

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

#232

Post by scarface_74 »

rchaud wrote: post #185
turnsout wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history of Apple is a history of "no one in their right mind would pay a premium for THAT." A $500 unsubsidized phone? A $350 watch to get notifications? Stupid-looking $200 earbuds that will fall out of your ears? AirPods got so much hate in 2016, it can be hard to remember. They were far from a sure thing.

Apple Watch can only be said to be a moderate success at best, considering Apple themselves have never disclosed how many they've sold. As for unsubsidized phones, the US is the only country that sold them on contract, and the iPhone didn't take off until Apple had AT&Tcut the price to $199 to match other flagships. The Nokia N95 for example retailed at $730 and sold millions in 2007.

Apple hasn’t disclosed unit sells in years of any of its products.

But the Watch is a moderate success compared to what? What other consumer electronic product by any other company is either selling in the estimated volume and with the margins of the Watch?

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

vanattab wrote: post #202
retskrad wrote: post #197

Based on the articles I've read about this product, it might be the most advanced consumer tech we've ever seen. It would be a surprise if the production was a smooth sailing.

How is it so much better then other passthrough vr headsets?

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by jwells89 »

vanattab wrote: post #202
retskrad wrote: post #197

Based on the articles I've read about this product, it might be the most advanced consumer tech we've ever seen. It would be a surprise if the production was a smooth sailing.

How is it so much better then other passthrough vr headsets?

Its fidelity is considerably higher with a 4k+ MicroOLED panel for each eye, which eliminates screen door effect, aliasing, etc making use cases that involve reading a lot of text in it more feasible. Its passthrough is also extremely low latency at 12ms, and it’s built with a full M2 SoC which is a good deal beefier than anything integrated into other standalone headsets.

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

#235

Post by troupo »

rchaud wrote: post #178
haswell wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the enduring myths about Apple's late entry into product sectors is the idea that they're waiting to "get it right". The first iPhone was a joke, it took them until the 3GS to get it right. I don't agree that this is a myth. If you look at the first generation iPhone in a vacuum, it was limited, perhaps (but I think there are plenty of arguments that the first gen iPhone was pushing envelopes - name one othe…

I'm not looking at the iPhone in a vaccuum. I'm also taking into consideration other things Apple has inexplicably delayed for multiple years: - support for mouse input - a native file manager app (2017!) - pressure-sensitive pens and screens (~ 4 years after Samsung) - Multiple apps on same screen (2019!) None of these are things that take years to get right. Apple commentators simply get lazy and recycle this iPod-…

> a native file manager app (2017!)

What would you do with one on a device where every app is heavily sandboxed and there's no common file system?

> pressure-sensitive pens and screens (~ 4 years after Samsung)

When they did release this, no competition was even close to the precision and fidelity.

When Apple releases something later than competition it's usually (but not always) justified and results in a better execution

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

#236

Post by smoldesu »

redtehartykle wrote: post #208
kzrdude wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's created seemingly for a high growth part of the cycle and not a recession. It might fail based on that timing?

Apple was just valued at over 3T. NVIDIA spiked. Infrastructure Bill spending is coming through as I understand it. We're in a post-vid slump growth phase.

Growth, or bubble? I don't forsee a world where Apple paves their way to 5 trillion dollar valuation. Both of their highest-margin products (iPhone and App Store) are under threat and require immediate re-arranging. They're an easy bet because "big company strong", but have so many mounting issues to deal with on the global stage. It's extremely unlikely this period of growth lasts into the future.

Nvidia is, as you said, a spike. One driven by AI but will probably be irrelevant in a few years. They're still great at engineering and CUDA will almost certainly continue to dominate, but the AI boom won't last forever. Once ASICs hit the scene it will be game over for GPGPU vendors, like it was with crypto in 2021. They'll still have gaming and industry markets to cater to, but their spiking days are numbered.

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

#237

Post by troupo »

taeric wrote: post #77
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…

Agreed that the price of the tool can be justified by the value it helps create. I'm always bemused to know that most giant movies are not made with Apple tech, though? Seems render farms in custom linux toolchains are the norm, more than the tools that we so often see in marketing. Or has that changed? I'd be lying if I said I keep up to date on this stuff.

Apple's Final Cut Pro used to hold 60% market share.

Movies are not just rendered on rendering farms. There's a ton of other stuff that gets done. Rendering the final movies is the smallest, most boring and trivial part of the whole process.

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

#238

Post by troupo »

MBCook wrote: post #28
LegitShady wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

again, the issue is development dollars. Its great that its high resolution displays, the question is if your company wants to dump hundreds of thousands of development dollars making something for the vision pro when its not clear there's a consumer market for them, or who the target market is. Sure apple could sell 100,000 anything. The question is are you going to be able to make any money developing for apple's $…

“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…

> 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.

Exactly. And Apple showed exactly zero use cases for "vision pro" that would be useful to these people.

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

#239

Post by jwells89 »

glimshe wrote: post #195
ilinx wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide an example of the sort of thing you’re talking about? Because I’m the type of person the other commenter was talking about (I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem for a very long time), and I feel I’m too close to it to have a reasonably objective viewpoint on it one way or the other.

As a daily mac user at work (against my will), there is much to complain about mac's UX. The big problem here is that no way anyone is objective given that most UX becomes "good" after repeated use. I have many examples, but I'll just pick one. When having multiple instances of an app, the doc adds a "dot" by the app icon. This dot is present no matter whether I have 2 instances or 10 instances. Oftentimes I forget i…

This may be a case of the mental model not matching the technical model. Under macOS, windows aren’t program instances, they’re just windows — they’re all hosted by the same single parent program instance. It’s technically possible to open a true second instance of a program using the Terminal, which spawns a second Dock icon, but few people do this on a regular basis.

This is why open windows are represented on the second level, e.g. listed in the context menu that appears when you right click a dock icon. Programs and windows are not synonymous, and in fact windows belong to programs.

Macs have used this model since they first gained multitasking decades ago.

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

#240

Post by lotsofpulp »

layer8 wrote: post #150
cubefox wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 It seems to be the opposite with folding phones. A lot of Android manufacturers releasing them, despite low sales numbers, while Apple apparently thinks: if we can’t sell a billion of them then why even bother?

Not to speak of the discontinued iPhone mini.

The iPhone 13 mini is still available for purchase:

https://store.apple.com/xc/product/IPHONE13_MAIN

Any source that they stopped making it?

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