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Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#631

Post by mathisfun123 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #491
dahwolf wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I organized a trip to a VR center for the entire team at work. Everybody had fun, but more like going to a theme park. Nobody ever talked about it again or bought one, just zero interest. And these are tech people.

Many people even by their mid 20s begin to lose the ability to embrace or even enjoy paradigm shifts. Moving from flat gaming to fully immersive 3D gaming just doesn't do enough to budge the hardened neural pathways that have embraced 2D gaming over the years. It's a frankly common case of being "stuck in ones way". Will VR and AR be the future? Absolutely, and a large part of the current population will be left behi…

>Many people even by their mid 20s begin to lose the ability to embrace or even enjoy paradigm shifts.

That word paradigm is doing so much work in this sentence. You realize we're talking about a gadget/product here, not a new system of government or medicine or locomotion right? So what you're basically saying is "some people lose the need to buy useless gadgets foisted on them by marketing".

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#632

Post by saiya-jin »

danpalmer wrote: post #624
user_named wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn't

Before the Apple Watch, no mainstream celebrities were photographed wearing smart watches. After the Apple Watch, celebrities are regularly photographed wearing just one type of smart watch – the Apple Watch. Whether you like it or not, for most people, celebrity culture drives luxury culture, and even in the top end markets it's still a leading indicator even if it's not driving it. I'm open to hearing constructive…

some people wear them, most of them clueless I-wear-it-too crowd. I see a lot of people around me / commuting wearing Garmin watches (ie fenix 7 pro), now that's a conversation starter.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#633

Post by goosedragons »

ajmurmann wrote: post #506
BizarreByte wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one in the whole on Nova Scotia. Not everywhere in an American city.

Most people live in urban areas though. Nova Scotia has only a million inhabitants and half of them live in Halifax where I assume the Apple Store is. If something needs fitting and prescription lenses it seems reasonable that a physical location needs to be visited and this is the kind of trade off one makes when moving to a rural area. I'd bet that this will still be convenient for the vast majority of the populati…

That one store in Nova Scotia is pretty much the Atlantic Canada store being the closest for most people in Newfoundland, PEI and a huge chunk of New Brunswick (on the Western side the Québec City store is closer maybe, still hours away). There's plenty of non-rural areas there without an Apple Store.

There is still 4 U.S states that lack an Apple store entirely. It's not like Wal-mart or even Best Buy.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#634

Post by fauigerzigerk »

zmmmmm wrote: post #384
BoppreH wrote: post #175

I'm very confused by Apple's strategy. As an owner of the original HTC Vive headset, its word-of-mouth power was off the charts. It was a blast at parties, and many of my friends bought their own $700+ devices after trying it. Here's what won them over: - Being able to try it themselves with little preparation ("put this on your head, tighten it here, and click these buttons on the controller"). You could even use it…

it's a totally different model of generating demand. They don't need marketing, because they have a completely captive audience of loyal apple fans who will easily saturate the first year (or even two years) of supply for this product. They are following Palmer Luckey's "Make people want it first model". Being supply limited, traditional marketing would only generate demand they can't satisfy. What they actually have…

>What they actually have to do is make sure every person who gets one has the most perfect experience possible.

But they can't have the most perfect experience if the software isn't there. And there won't be enough software that actually utilises the 3D features until a sufficient number of developers get access to the device.

So I agree that the strategy can work but it can also be overstretched. If expensive devices become obsolete before they become useful, and if developers write this off as some sort of forever niche then momentum will die.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#635

Post by steveBK123 »

XorNot wrote: post #509
steveBK123 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was easy to do well on the cheap it would already have been done. Apple seems to have maxed out every possible spec and put a ton of research and software into making a great experience. Probably will see it move down price points from here (it already has Pro in name so presumably that’s the top). The parts will get cheaper over time as well which will help.

While true... That doesn't mean it will actually be any good at what it's trying to do. VR/AR is truly at the edge of our current technological abilities - Apple can have done everything to the best standard possible and still not be good enough here.

Agree.

Nor is their a guarantee that its even a viable market at scale.

Apple is too big to serve niches (see how they let some product lines wilt like Mac Pro, Apple TV hardware) and needs to sell 10s of millions of units in the near term.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#636

Post by [deleted] »

CydeWeys wrote: post #561
gizajob wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah absolutely. Every time I’ve been in my local Apple Store, I’ve basically been talked out of purchasing, or it becomes a huge hassle of upselling and extra worrying charges, and quite frankly, stupidity and lack of knowledge from the pseudo-smart staff. All they can do is toe the party line and what they’ve been trained to say and do, which kind of falls apart when faced with someone who has used Apple computers…

What a miserable experience! Meanwhile I had the opposite experience in a Google Store recently. I picked a phone case off the shelf in 10s, told the nearest employee I wanted to buy it, and he immediately whipped out a credit card scanner and I bought it right there in 30s. Didn't even need to go to the checkout counter or anything. It probably helps that that store is less crowded than the Apple store, but their tr…

[deleted]

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#637

Post by HPsquared »

dan-robertson wrote: post #431
crooked-v wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had the kind of experience you're talking about at an Apple Store, so I'm very confused about those anecdotes.

I’ve not had such a terrible experience but I’ve had the experience of being confused trying to work out how to buy something and the shop assistant being almost surprised that someone wanted to buy something instead of just looking at things. It was smooth enough after that but I would typically order online after that (which was mostly fine except for an annoying case where they would only deliver if I showed up in…

That situation has the makings of a comedy sketch.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#638

Post by FabHK »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #296
hordehamhill wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy. That's the power of marketing eh. Almost as soon as the DK1 was available, people were running desktop envs inside VR. 3D modelling, CAD, multiple floating desktops, watching movies videos in 3D or big fake theaters, panoramic photos... Google even had a 3D paintbrush program demo on their cardboard product half a decade or more ago. This is stuff all been explored before.

When it's at 10-15 pixels per degree like those early models, it's a cute demo rather than a realistic screen replacement. As a reference, the standard resolution for web pages is 47 pixels per degree.

The Vision Pro estimates I've seen are between 33 and 40 PPD (while 20/20 vision is 60 to 70 PPD at the centre of the field of vision). So this could be quite sharp, particularly if you have the text somewhat larger (on the huge virtual monitors) than you'd normally have it.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#639

Post by FabHK »

CHY872 wrote: post #201
hordehamhill wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about this product opened your eyes that the previous 15 years of VR/AR did not? Just Apple's marketing power? Or is there something specific about this device that made it click for you?

From my perspective: 1. Eye tracking for interaction vs hand tracking. If the UX works out, the amount of precision that can be reached is just far higher with less effort - just seems to be an easier technical problem. 2. Resolution and lensing. Most VR headsets have fairly low quality fresnel lenses which cause distortion near the edges (basically - if you want to see something in good detail, you have to tilt your…

4. Nausea is apparently caused by latency between head movements and updates of the visual field, which they've kept very low on the Vision Pro by means of that R1 chip.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#640

Post by FabHK »

bombcar wrote: post #108
giobox wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus even in the U.S Apple Store's aren't that common There are 270+ Apple stores in the US, I don't have the figures to hand but an overwhelming percentage of the country's actual population live within an hour of an Apple store. They are common, frankly. I'm not defending the decision to require a store visit here, but lets not paint a picture of Apple store availability that doesn't exist. The number of people w…

That’s about one apple store for every twenty Walmarts.

So, the next Apple Store will be around 4.5 times further than the next Walmart, on average.
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