Like many people, I’ve said a lot about the Apple Vision Pro for a person who doesn’t have one.
Despite having poked fun at the price, the goofy eyeballs, and maybe the battery pack (I can’t even remember now), I want to be clear that I don’t think the Vision Pro is a bad product. It is a bad product for me because I don’t have $3,500 to spend on almost any individual computing device, no matter what it does.
If the rumors are to be believed, however, that barrier to entry will be changing. When that happens, Vision Pro could go from a niche product to… well, maybe just a bigger niche product, but one that has a viable ecosystem of content.
In the works
According to Mark Gurman, Apple’s Vision Products Group is working on multiple potential new devices, including a more powerful second-generation Vision Pro and a cheaper Vision headset. Gurman now thinks that it won’t arrive until 2027 and could cost about $2,000, production costs having been reduced by shedding EyeSight (previously referred to as “the goofy eyeballs”) and being made of less premium materials.
Would people be more interested in an Apple Vision headset if it were similar to the Meta Orion?
Meta
Apple is also supposedly working on AR glasses, supposedly along the lines of the recently unveiled Meta Orion prototype. If you think it’s a coincidence that this rumor is being floated just weeks after tech pundits sat up in their chairs Leonardo DiCaprio-style and pointed at Meta’s device that might as well be made from unobtainium, well, then you are just adorable. Look at those big eyes! Cute as a button, you are. Sure, Apple probably has been working on several different types of AR headsets and probably really does have something more like Orion. The company just doesn’t show prototypes.
Unless you count the Vision Pro as one.
Of carts and horses
In order to make Vision Pro a viable, long-term platform, more people need to own them so more content is made for the platform. It’s that simple. The $3,500 question is, is $2,000 cheap enough to create a big enough market that a real tipping point occurs?
$2,000 is still a lot, even though Apple products always come at a premium because, well, they’re usually just better. For its part, Apple itself doesn’t think a reduction of 43 percent is going to move the needle that much either, according to Gurman:
With the lower price, Apple is expecting unit sales of the device to be at least double the level of the Vision Pro. But that’s not saying much.
It’s not the old saw about how twice nothing is still nothing but it’s not far off.
What is the tipping point price? Hard to say but until Apple can get the Vision line below $1,000, it feels like it’s going to inch forward incrementally, slowly expanding the platform’s ecosystem. Still, there is the question of how long you can keep people on the computer and smartphone farm once they’ve seen the bright lights of spatial computing. Some are real converts to the platform.
Apple released the immersive (pun shamefully intended) video “Submerged” last week to very favorable reviews. “Submerged” seems like a harbinger of an entirely new way to think about how movies and shows should be filmed and enjoyed in this new medium. The Verge’s Victoria Song seemed somewhat put off by the subject matter but was still struck by the experience.
I can–and did–occasionally choose to turn my head to stare at the rivets in the submarine’s metal walls or beads of condensation in a torpedo tube (also, rudely, a roach skittering across the floor).
It’s not a holodeck, but it’s a start. Song doubts the ability to convey the impact of something like “Submerged” and whether it will get anyone to shell out $3,500. That may be, but what about $1,999? Or $1,499? Things could start to change if not quickly then at least steadily.
One of the early criticisms of the Vision Pro is that there wasn’t enough immersive content for it. “Submerged” shows that’s been true but also the potential of the platform as an entertainment device once more content starts to come. As someone who’s ribbed the Vision Pro a bit, this is the kind of thing that has me intrigued. Now, for me, the Vision product line can’t reach critical mass soon enough.
Author: John Moltz, Contributor, Macworld
John Moltz recently gave up the glamour of working in corporate IT to write online at his Very Nice Web Site. He does not respond to questions about whether he used to write what amounts to Apple fan fiction.