This product will go the way of the Touch Bar in a couple of years. The original iPhone launched at roughly $742 adjusted for inflation. Apple Vision Pro starts at nearly five times that amount and from what I understand that's not factoring in much if any margin. If that is indeed the case Apple has a long, long road ahead before they can price this thing anywhere near a level where it makes sense for the average consumer or even the above-average enthusiast.
Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
121–130 of 213 posts
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their storage markups only get more obscene with retail SSD prices continuing to crash. $800 to upgrade from 256GB to 2TB? A fast 2TB NVMe drive can be had for ~$130.
>with retail SSD prices continuing to crash When was the last time you checked this? SDD prices have skyrocketed back up in the past ~3-5 months as Samsung and SK have reduced production to halt losses. Prices are now back to where they were ~12 months ago. At least in Europe.
That $130 is the current rate on Amazon for a 2TB PCIe 4.0 drive from a good brand.
Maybe it's a little more than it was, but still hilariously cheap compared to what Apple charges.
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#123"It’s a V1 Apple product. It’s a new category, for them, and by far the most ambitious headset on the consumer market." Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors. Meta Quest 3 is better on everything, despite eye tracking(for a reason, it sucks for many things, I'm sure Meta can have just as good, if they wanted to, but they like…
> Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors. That is an extremely strange view of history. While I don't think other Apple v1 products were "half-assed", they were clearly unfinished, but showed a ton of potential. I think the exact same thing applies to the Vision Pro. The original iPhone received a lot of complaints about not s…
> I think the Vision Pro (and, honestly, many other VR headsets) is largely a solution looking for a problem
For me that’s the biggest issue with the Vision Pro: its lack of usefulness.
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#124The AVP feels very much like a product with enormous, as-yet undelivered potential. Anyone not willing to take a gamble and wait it out ought not to be an early adopter. Future generations will reduce or eliminate the pain points, lower the price, etc. For the foreseeable future, I expect that even most people who like it won't use it as much as they hoped. I'm very bullish on its potential, but I haven't put my mone…
People have been saying that about VR headsets in general, but when I got mine and beat HL:Alyx--which was admittedly pretty fun--the only games I came back to were beat saber and that bow and arrow game in "the lab", I gave a try to a bunch of other games, including NSFW ones, and the magic isn't there, what you get out of it is not worth all the hassle of using a VR headset.
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#125"It’s a V1 Apple product. It’s a new category, for them, and by far the most ambitious headset on the consumer market." Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors. Meta Quest 3 is better on everything, despite eye tracking(for a reason, it sucks for many things, I'm sure Meta can have just as good, if they wanted to, but they like…
>Apple made it clear to me that they've released this device mostly out of fears of phones becoming irrelevant and not having a device to replace it.
Wait, people think this thing is going to replace a phone? I can't imagine...
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
>with retail SSD prices continuing to crash When was the last time you checked this? SDD prices have skyrocketed back up in the past ~3-5 months as Samsung and SK have reduced production to halt losses. Prices are now back to where they were ~12 months ago. At least in Europe.
That $130 is the current rate on Amazon for a 2TB PCIe 4.0 drive from a good brand. Maybe it's a little more than it was, but still hilariously cheap compared to what Apple charges.
Sure, but Apple can charge whatever they want. People aren't forced to buy only Apple computers.
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A fast 2TB NVMe drive can be had for ~$130 Not if the drive is soldered to the motherboard..
With thin laptops you can maybe justify that as a necessary compromise for the form factor, but there's no good reason the Mac Studio shouldn't have a hatch on the bottom with two or three M.2 2280 slots inside. You can put your own PCIe SSDs in the Mac Pro, but that's so wildly marked up compared to an equivalently specced Mac Studio that it probably cancels out any savings.
A PCIe/NVME adapter costs $10 on Amazon.
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#128One thing I just think is interesting re: the complaints about the price. First, I wholeheartedly agree - I can't imagine paying that much for something like this.
But it also highlights how ridiculously cheap consumer electronics have become, and how much our expectations are baked into that. This reviewer paid a total of $5,013, including sales tax, for the Apple Vision Pro. The original Apple IIe, released in 1977, was priced at $12,740 in 2022 dollars for the max RAM model, not including tax.
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#129The fact that Apple is still using a difference of 256GB storage to jump the price $200 is really funny to me. This is already a wildly premium device, but they just can't resist trying to scrape a little bit more.
They also skipped headphones or bone conduction on it just to sell more Airpods.
I'd argue not to sell more AirPods, I mean sure it's a great extra bonus, but what is the other option you would prefer? that they cover the ears completely like big studio headphones? That they give you a pair of AirPods? Or that they make tethered AirPods? Or Bone Conduction, which means audio quality typically plummets and complicates how the device rests on the cheekbones.
All of those are various compromises that also suck for various reasons.
What about people with hearing issues? Most of these alternatives are terrible for people that wear hearing aids.
Re: Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't really understand the utility until I watched Casey Neistat's video of using it in public as a portable entertainment experience device. If it gets down to a lower pricepoint I can definitely imagine people using it on public transport and the like to watch netflix on their commute. People will definitely want to use it that way, because that's a totally novel use case. If it gets down to $1000 and is portab…
Yeah I agree - an immersive "sleep mask" where someone can lay back and enjoy some private experience while killing time is the use case neither Apple nor Meta seem to be fully embracing yet. Make it lighter, more discrete, easy to slip on and off- and people probably wouldn't be too embarrassed to jump in.
I'm reminded a bit of the Sony HMZ-T1 and Glasstron. I think the trouble is Meta is interested in use cases that drive data generation and "social" experiences, and apple is looking for the next iPhone/app store versus what the tech is best suited to.