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

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

#701
post #197

Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one…

I've been to my local Apple Store once, and it was a great experience. I was there to trade-in two M1 Macbook Air's. No associate was available however I got one after 5 minutes and they very quickly completed the trade-ins without any questions whatsoever, and wished me a great day. No attempt to sell/upsell me a product (I told them at the beginning I was going to purchase online) and they were very friendly.

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

#702
post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I have seen with actual experience USING VR and AR say it is not even evolutionary, let alone revolutionary.

Palmer Luckey disagrees: https://www.uploadvr.com/palmer-luckey-on-meta-quest-pro/

Surely you understand how emotionally invested in the success of VR he is right? Palmer wants "Ready Player One" to happen even though that would mean most people live in squalor and their only escape is some highly financialized "virtual world". Most normal people don't want that.

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

#703
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience of the same has been the opposite. Friends I showed it to telling me "interesting" then moving on and never mentioning it again. And I felt the same. It went to storage less than a month after I received it.

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.

Yeah, it's a little bit fun. Definitely something I'd do once every few years.

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

#704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is greyed out as if it was downvoted a bit, which seems quite bizarre to me. I think we’re pretty clearly talking about a small number of contrary data points, here? I’m not trying to prove a general trend at least, just point out that we should at least double check the assumption that expensive implies shared. If someone is really invested in that idea I’d love to see an argument for it, rather than si…

I haven't downvoted but your first post point out that it's negatively correlated. It seems to non correlated. An example is a car shared by family.

I know plenty of middle class parents who bought their teenagers an old beater because they didn’t want them driving the car they needed to get to work or their expensive car.

Wrecking your first car is almost a teenage rite of package.

Again we are talking about people who are willing to spend $3500 on a headset. Not exactly the demographic of people who are “sharing a family car” and that don’t statistically have separate cars for the parents and don’t either buy their kids a car or subsidize them in some way to help them buy their own.

I know I never let either one of my sons drive my car alone and I bought myself a new car and handed my older one down to my older son and bought my younger son a car before he had a license.

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

#705
post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palmer Luckey disagrees: https://www.uploadvr.com/palmer-luckey-on-meta-quest-pro/

Surely you understand how emotionally invested in the success of VR he is right? Palmer wants "Ready Player One" to happen even though that would mean most people live in squalor and their only escape is some highly financialized "virtual world". Most normal people don't want that.

You said:

> Everyone I have seen with actual experience USING VR and AR say it is not even evolutionary, let alone revolutionary.

Luckey obviously has that experience. Now you're changing to a different argument. Marques Brownlee also has experience with these products and says it was impressive and that there's nothing equivalent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvXuyITwBI.

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

#706

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…

Young one, let me tell you that as you gain responsibility (employment, find a home, start a family)...your gaming days are as good as over. It becomes a casual infrequent hobby at best.

As for a paradigm shift, we've had AR for 10 years now. With the exception of navigating a city by foot, there's zero successful mainstream use cases.

There's not a single VR game that has appealed to the masses so much as to buy a headset. Not one.

It's expensive, inconvenient, anti-social and it doesn't stick.

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

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> large part of the current population will be left behind What does "left behind" mean?

It means you say way less pixels than insiders. Because that's absolutely a problem, us not having enough screen time.

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

#709
post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's gotta be a lesson here: if your customer is ready to hand you money, best you just go ahead and take it without further delay.

It’s a brave commenter who tries telling Apple they’re doing retail wrong. I’d guess Apple wants to avoid their shops feeling like a supermarket, to avoid commoditisation. They want it to be like buying a work of art, where each one is unique and special. You need a knowledgable curator to guide you. I know that for us on HN it’s all bullshit, but it’s a very, very successful strategy.

I think the overall delayed and selective launch is attributed to the reasons you mentioned. They know they'll have to get this right 17 years after the initial iphone was released. I'd probably do the same thing if I were the head of commercialization/distribution. If they screwed this up (selling a few hundred Ks of units on a global release in the first few months), the stock will get hammered

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

#710
post #326

Totally makes sense. It needs to be sold exactly like a vehicle. They probably only want serious people trying these things. And by serious I mean people with the money to spend and intent to buy it. My first thought when I saw this was how will this work in an Apple store with every Tom, Dick and Mary with at most $100 bucks in their bank account and a bunch of soon to be maxed out credit cards trying this thing but…

They could do it without appointments. Just require that prospective buyers bring their car keys. Then tell anyone driving something less fancy than a Mercedes S-class or equivalent to fuck off :-) It's funny to see a company rooted in jeans and T-shirt California counterculture struggle to reinvent something that would have been painfully obvious to any luxury store owner before the 20th century: throw out anyone no…

"obvious to any luxury store owner before the 20th century: throw out anyone not wearing sufficiently fancy clothing."

The Beverley Hillbillies got 9 seasons outta that trope!

Wouldn't work in oil towns though, often the worst dressed bloke is the richest in the room.

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