Comment by d3nj4l

I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory of "it costs more than many can afford to buy on a whim" instead of "it costs more than it should" of things like AirPods. Where the Pro Display XDR gets away with that is, at the end of the day, it's just a display for content the same as any other. Where the Vision Pro will need to do some fighting is traditional content is a much harder sell for a AR/VR device. I think Apple is trying their best to tackle that software problem head on trying to improve integrations and offer day 1 native options, which is what they always aim for, but it's still clearly going to have some penetration difficulty due to price and small target audience at first. Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.

There's a ton of hidden bias in this assessment. Have you considered that you either live in a wealthy area or are surrounded by people who are more prone to seeing having iDevices as a status symbol? Because

> People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries.

Is absolutely not true in my experience.

> People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know.

And how many of those laptops are corporate assets that were provided by their employer? How many of those professionals actually use Macs anywhere outside of work?

AirPods are popular, sure, but I have quite literally never seen AirPods Max in the wild. People in the market for premium noise cancelling headsets are all buying Sony or Bose.

And it isn't just about price. There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper, and they still haven't found product market fit. The problem isn't that they need more polish.

With Meta winding down its reality investments Vision Pro is pretty much the last shot this entire sector has. If this device fails then we have no choice but to accept that VR/AR is at best a niche hobby, not the world-changing technology that we so desperately want it to be.

I'm wondering that too, but from the presentation it looked a lot more "iPhone" than "mac". The only thing they demo'd that looked like a real desktop was an actual mac being mirrored in the display. Everything else seemed like an app you had to install through a new app store.

Most people didn't say the M1 was overpriced. Most people said it was a good value for once. That's partly why it got so much attention. In this case, most people are saying this device is overpriced.

> People said the M1 Pros were overpriced

Yeah but most people aren't paying for those: their employers are.

I don't think many employers are going to buy such an expensive tool.

The weird thing to me is that people forget every failed Apple product and live in a bubble in which every new Apple toy is a hit.

They had as many fails as success, we just forgot about them entierly

There's overpriced and then there's the next level above that of simply being unimaginably unaffordable.

With the former well, its something for enthusiasts and something for regular people to save up for.

With the latter it's dismissed as something for another class of people and out of sight and mind.

Apple may have ventured into the latter category here.

Not a great space to be if you want to build a platform and lure developers to build on it. Developers want to have a big market.

For comparison the original Macintosh was $2500 in 1984, equivalent to $7000 today.

If this is as good as the demo was showing for pro applications it's revolutionary as a computing interface.

Since you can use it to view your mac's screen it seems there are no app restriction per say, but the built in app I imagine will be like all other Apple walled garden apps only loaded via the app store.

Did people really say that the original Airpods were overpriced?[1] IIRC back in 2016 BT earbuds (that weren't connected by a band) were mostly pretty shitty, which I think was the root of most people's skepticism, not the price?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12446094

> People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it.

The salient difference between those devices and this one is: none of those require software developers to do anything special to support them.

Granted, Apple had some success in the past telling developers considering a Mac port of their software "these are not the droids you are looking for."

> Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval?

I’m sure we all know the answer to this.

> web engine that's not WebKit?

rofl

The AirPods, Pro Display XDR, even the iPhone were just improved and streamlined improvements of a established products with clear use cases. This is something completely different.. At this point this is just an expensive gimmick. That might change when people figure what they can do with it or it might not.

> it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled

And the iPad is a general purpose computer..

But there were already tons of people using earbuds, headphones, laptops, and monitors. They brought a high-end product to an already mature market. Whereas here, they are introducing a very expensive device into a segment, VR goggles, that has flopped over and over again with consumers everywhere. Apple might be able to pull off their magic, who knows, but it's way more dubious than with the other things you mentioned.

> That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price.

This is where the product gives me pause. I am very happy to early-adopt this thing but if I cannot "do what I want" then I will pretty disappointed as I would not expect a comparable product to enter the market for another 5+ years as all this specialized hardware experiences commoditization.

I am very happy using my Linux desktop, slightly less happy with my Linux laptop (fingers crossed the 15" Framework changes that" and am not kidding myself by holding any expectations for what the F/OSS A/VR future will look like in the near-to-mid-term.

You live in a wealthy area, I rarely see Airpods Max in San Francisco.

i'm leaning more to the iphone side, theres not a chance apple is gonna allow webxr and have developers distribute products without apples cut.

Do you honestly think the price fixation is “weird”? $3500 is insanely expensive for a consumer product - so expensive that it is flat out unobtainable for many Americans, and an extremely hard sell for many more.

Emphasis on progressive web apps in macOS is a good hint with the first wave of apps this will have. Similar to how iPhone first didn't allow for third party apps, this will take the first year to sort out all the HCI before allowing for app store uploads.

This is very much nReal but polished, and those goggles are dim and not as immersive as this. Magic Leap went with the wrong direction it turned out.

I think what you're describing speaks more to Apple's marketing prowess than whether AirPods are overpriced or not.

this opinion seems more influenced by the writer's environment than not.

i will be cautious to oversell its current use case. like it has been speculated by some youtubers, this might be more of a mvp like scenario like with apple watch in the best case scenario.

although i am glad this is making quest 3 look more acceptable.

> phone, laptop and massive display

Including 3d video recording, which is under-appreciated in many of the threads. Two GoPro Hero cameras + rig would cost minimum $500, and you might have to edit photos and videos in post. And Apple does this automagically for you.

Probably be a little wary on just doing a casual visual inspection. There's a wide range of airpod knockoffs at this point which are much cheaper but look almost identical at least at first glance.

there's no doubt that with is onw appstore and os is more like the iphone and you will not be able to install anything that Apple has not approved, neither buy anything without Apple taking its cut

It's neither a phone nor a laptop. It can provide some of their functionality in limited situations, but it's considerably less flexible or portable than either.

It also captures a new kind of content: spatial video. Upper middle class families with toddlers are going to want this. To relive the children's childhood forever.

The Vision Pro is a standalone device.

A laptop + high-end headset would be in the same ballpark, at least maybe after deducting $500 or so for the Apple Tax.

Since the space/weight for batteries is limited, I bet it will be more like iphone, so only WebKit and tight control to optimize battery usage.

> Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval?

Snowball's chance in hell

Given you can use your mac’s screen on it, it’s almost moot depending on the app or latency involved. But knowing Apple it’ll probably be more iPhone since they’ve even been pushing App Store on Macs more too

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The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. Airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. That's what driving the sales.

No one will be wearing this in public. And if anything, the person in the office using this first will look dorky. So I can't see it having the same appeal/free advertising.