New app releases for Apple Vision Pro have fallen dramatically since launch

Apple struggles to attract content from developers for its $3,500 headset.

See full article...

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

If there was a nearly 2 decade hiatus...doesn't that kinda show consumers just aren't interested?

If the first versions came out in the 1990s and the market only existed for two years before dying from lack of interest...and then the Oculus Rift DK1 came out in 2013 and the market didn't take off (again)...why should we believe that things will be different this time around?

Consumers have repeatedly shown very little interest in this market for nearly four decades now. At what point do we listen to them and stop trying to make it happen?

Consumer interest only ever happens once a technology is mature. This is the universal rule for all hardware. VR was far too primitive to jumpstart a viable market in the 1990s, especially since there was such little funding going into it during that push. That changed in the 2010s with big tech.

The market is at a minimum viable point (for early adopters) today. It exists, millions of people actively use VR inside and outside of gaming. Many companies are on-board, investment in the tens of billions. Lots of core problems being solved in R&D. That's why it may be different this time.

FYI, machine learning was tried for about 5 decades before it became a big part of our lives. Sometimes you have waves.

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

I've owned the OG Oculus Rift, Samsung Odyssey, Quest 2, Rift S, and HP Reverb (current), and spend free time stitching giant 360 photospheres for VR. Which is to say, I love VR as much as anyone, but I still think it's going to fail. It's just too clunky to get in and out of, strains your eyes and makes you feel a bit queasy, and despite all the immersiveness, ultimately enables you to do very little you couldn't actually have achieved on a phone or regular computer without those downsides. Even if we ignore those latter concerns, I think you'd need the AVP level screen/optics crammed into the form factor of a pair of sunglasses that's that easy to don/doff to really have a chance, and we just don't have the tech. Nor will we anytime soon I think, especially if you don't want it tethered to a battery pack (and people might go for the glasses, but once you have batteries and wires, you're back to a phone having way less hassle). The immersive experience just isn't critical enough for getting things done.

I feel like you're talking about a completely different thing. They were referencing AR rather than VR, and referencing technology of the future, not of today.

Why can't the clunkiness be fixed? Why can't the nausea be fixed? Why can't the eye strain be fixed? What makes these insurmountable issues that no time in the future can ever be solved? Will the tech require a long time to mature? Definitely, but that doesn't mean it's destined for failure.

 

[pavon]

I think you drastically underestimate the popularity of multiplayer gaming on consoles like the Switch (over 141 million units sold) and party games like those offered in the Jackbox collection.

Even if most gaming is solo or performed online - and I suspect it is - a substantial amount is still in-person multiplayer, and a device that simply doesn't allow for that at all isn't going to be an easy sell to replace consoles and platforms that do allow for it when players want to.

I don't think I do, because I love couch coop games, and am lucky to see a good one released every couple of years, so they can't be a huge part of the console market. Furthermore, VR doesn't have to be capable of replacing all gaming to capture a significant part of the market, nor does it have to be single-use. The Switch is a perfect example - it could be a headset for portable use, and then dock to the TV for multiplayer in-person use.

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

My comment specifically said "My phone is...private when I want to type something instead of saying it aloud."

Nothing you've said about the privacy of the display makes that privacy of input concern irrelevant.

Voice is extremely unlikely to be the main input of AR. EMG seems like the most likely thing, and if that doesn't pan out, then eye+hand tracking.

 

[TheGreenMonkey]

This form factor was DOA anyway.

Edit: to add evidence

Spoiler: I mean...

View attachment 85168

A diving/snorkling mask, how interesting.

 

[dft]

In Australia this starts at $6000 AUD. Nearly $4100 USD.

Outside of some rich tech bros this thing is a none starter in Oz whether you like it or not.

But even with a cheaper model I don’t see it.

The industry has been trying to sell VR for over 2 decades now and it’s always… about to be huge.

Most people don’t want things attached to their face. It has all kinds of draw backs beyond just how it looks.

Even those that are happy to do so will only do so for short bursts. It’s not going to happen.

 

[Makotor]

Offering my point of view as an actual owner and user of an AVP: Too much hyperbole in this (and every) conversation.

My situation: I do most of my professional work on a high spec MBP, in a home office which received a lot of indulgent love during Covid, and am fortunate enough that the cost of the AVP was not a meaningful financial decision in my monthly budget.

For me the AVP feels very similar to my iPad Pro: They both extend the options I have when working with my primary system, and I could not see either replacing that yet. I turn to the iPad when I want to use the pen input for various things, particularly to step away from a desk and focus on a very rough draft, outline, or sketch/diagram of something I've been banging my head against for a few hours already to no avail and need to come at from another angle. I also sometimes bring it as a stand alone device when I don't want to lug the 16" MBP around.

The AVP is similar for me: I use it when my primary work setup isn't available or isn't the best tool for getting the job done. When I'm away from my home office, I find it to be a better setup then most office desks available to me (Full setup is: MBP 16", AVP, Apple Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad) primary work is happening in the mirrored screen from the MBP, supporting resources (Documentation, notes, LucidChart, etc.) are running native on the AVP. The keyboard/mouse pass through and clipboard integration make it relatively smooth.

Additionally, it's great on an airplane. Which is a super niche use case, but particularly if you work on sensitive/confidential stuff (I'm talking annual compensation reviews, not Top Secret Spy Stuff...), and have to travel for work with any regularity.

Finally, as I've gotten more practiced with it, I'm starting to enjoy doing some work (e.g. diagrams/flowcharts) with the eye tracking interface. This is taking A LOT of learning, but I've got 35+ years of familiarity with KB/Mouse that I'm catching up on, so I'm not expecting to be fully proficient in a few months of intermittent use.

Will is be a successful product? I dunno. But I really hope so, because I like mine, and enjoy using it when the situation calls for it. I'd like to see a wider app ecosystem, and I'd absolutely buy a hardware refresh in 3-4 years.

Anyhow, that's my take as a boring pragmatic user of it. Yes, the price tag is a huge barrier, but if it was any less capable than it currently is it would not function for boring normal productivity purposes. I have other VR gear, they are great for games, but I couldn't do a few minutes of work in them, let alone a few hours.

Is it a must have tool? No. But it brings me joy in the same way a fancy keyboard or endlessly perfecting a desk setup do, and I appreciate it's existence.

 

[stevenjklein]

If only it could do this, they'd sell millions (from Wired 11.10):

 

[maxoakland]

Absolutist arguments like this don't make sense when the technology is very early on even if it seems like it's been a long while. In truth, hardware platforms take a lot longer than it’s been for VR to catch on. A Vision Pro engineer compared it to the Apple Lisa launch in 1983. For anyone unaware, PCs didn't take off until just before Windows 95, about a decade later. That's the kind of timescale we're dealing with here, and it's something that companies are acutely aware of as they are under no delusion that this is supposed to take off today.

Apple Lisa, the famously overpriced failure? That’s an apt comparison, I think

The problem for Vision Pro is Apple had the Macintosh to release the next year after the Lisa. It had been in development almost as long as the Lisa was and tons of resources went into figuring out how to make a machine consumers might actually be able to afford

And even then, it wasn’t actually much of a success and was overtaken by a competitor

The main question is: Does VR and AR compare to the GUI in terms of making things that much easier and smoother for end users? If not, it’s not like the Lisa and is more like the Pippin

 

[TimeWinder]

II would expect current headsets to be able to track my coffee and keep it visible on my virtual desktop, no need to switch to a passthrough mode. IIRC from reviews, the Apple headset already tracks the Apple keyboard and touchpad, and hackers have created coffee mugs / coffee coasters that various VR headsets are able to track to highlight in your VR world.

That stuff won't work on the AVP because devs have no live access to the cameras (and so far as I know, there's been no "jailbreak" to allow it). The V2 software has some ability to track real-world objects, but there are significant limitations (mostly that you have to have a fairly accurate 3D model of the specific object you want to track available).

But either way, that not really the problem. Nearly all current AVP software is passthrough; there's very, very little immersive except for the "put me on the moon while I do this non-immersive thing" environments. I don't use those much, I don't know if others do or not.

The "real" coffee problem is much more physical: the headset sticks out a significant distance from your face and sits relatively low on your face. You just can't tip a mug enough to drink from without it hitting the headset. Even something skinny like a bottle can be borderline; for drinking while wearing it, you're really looking at a straw.

 

[maxoakland]

Do you think Steve 'Give the customers what they want? Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.' Jobs would have hired you? Or the risk taker?

Pretty sure Vision Pro never would’ve been released in this state if there was someone customer-focused at the helm

 

[OlfactoriusRex]

I certainly will never pay for a VR/AR headset that costs thousands of dollars, but if someone wants to prove to me how awesome they are by giving me one, I will take that offer. (I really just wan to play Half Life: Alyx.)

 

[dft]

I feel like you're talking about a completely different thing. They were referencing AR rather than VR, and referencing technology of the future, not of today.

Why can't the clunkiness be fixed? Why can't the nausea be fixed? Why can't the eye strain be fixed? What makes these insurmountable issues that no time in the future can ever be solved? Will the tech require a long time to mature? Definitely, but that doesn't mean it's destined for failure.

Most people don’t want to wear things in their faces.

Take glasses which would likely be the smallest form of this kind of device outside something that projects into your eyeball.

People get laser eye surgery to avoid having to wear then. Many people never wear sunglasses.

Glasses can be annoying, break, hard to find ones that look good. Then place your pointing a video camera in someone’s face which will never be ok with all people.

That’s the smallest likely form factor and plenty of people will reject. Now if they got to that level would there be a market… probably.

But the tech would have to be so small and powerful compared to now that if we was at that level your phone and other devices would still be infinitely more capable as they would have more space for similar more powerful tech.

VR has been coming for decades now… it’s always “when the cost comes down, when the tech gets better or some combo.” It’s just the tech isn’t ever likely to get there as when it does everything else will be so much better

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

Most people don’t want to wear things in their faces.

Take glasses which would likely be the smallest form of this kind of device outside something that projects into your eyeball.

People get laser eye surgery to avoid having to wear then. Many people never wear sunglasses.

Glasses can be annoying, break, hard to find ones that look good. Then place your pointing a video camera in someone’s face which will never be ok with all people.

That’s the smallest likely form factor and plenty of people will reject. Now if they got to that level would there be a market… probably.

But the tech would have to be so small and powerful compared to now that if we was at that level your phone and other devices would still be infinitely more capable as they would have more space for similar more powerful tech.

VR has been coming for decades now… it’s always “when the cost comes down, when the tech gets better or some combo.” It’s just the tech isn’t ever likely to get there as when it does everything else will be so much better

People get laser eye surgery, aye. Many billions of others don't.

Plenty of people reject laptops and desktops; that doesn't mean they aren't huge mass market products.

You say everything else will be so much better, but that fails to factor in how VR enables new usecases that other devices can't provide for.

 

[pavon]

If there was a nearly 2 decade hiatus...doesn't that kinda show consumers just aren't interested?

If the first versions came out in the 1990s and the market only existed for two years before dying from lack of interest...and then the Oculus Rift DK1 came out in 2013 and the market didn't take off (again)...why should we believe that things will be different this time around?

Consumers have repeatedly shown very little interest in this market for nearly four decades now. At what point do we listen to them and stop trying to make it happen?

There was a solid decade between Englebart's The Mother of All Demos and PCs, but I don't think that was do to lack of interest - it was just too expensive and limiting. So interactive computing was stuck in research institutes with things like PLATO until technology caught up with the ideas.

 

[negolith]

People get laser eye surgery, aye. Many billions of others don't.

Plenty of people reject laptops and desktops; that doesn't mean they aren't huge mass market products.

You say everything else will be so much better, but that fails to factor in how VR enables new usecases that other devices can't provide for.

What are your personal experiences with VR/AR? Just wondering where your passion for it came from.

 

[wickerbill]

The guy who thinks it will be bigger than the smartphone is delusional.

 

[TimeWinder]

Pretty Vision Pro never would’ve been released in this state if there was someone customer-focused at the helm

That's basically my take, too. It's way too early to tell if visionOS (not the specific AVP) is going to be a "google glass" or "smartphones," because a usable product hasn't been released with it yet.

Tools: Even if the "this was a developer release" nonsense (Apple spent millions on ads showing non-developers using it) were true, it isn't even a developer release. It was pushed out the door without adequate tools being available, and more than a year after its announcement, the dev tools are still in such a primitive shape that the only people who even can write for this have years of experience in the AR/3D parts of Apple's specific ecosystem. And those folks are expensive and/or valuable, likely being used for Apple ecosystem projects with much much more potential ROI. I've got one non-game app in the store that specifically supports AVP: universal for macOS, iOS, and visionOS. The (relatively small) part of the app that does "spatial" work on visionOS took like 8x as long as the entire rest of the app to write. And so far, there have been exactly two sales, probably because it has a price tag rather than being ad-supported.

Comfort: While the comfort issues with the AVP are seriously overstated by the "influencer" crowd going after clicks, there are a bunch of little ergonomic issues that have to be resolved -- in particular, the AVP is most comfortable when you are reclined, but many, many apps become quickly unusable in situations where your natural gaze line is not lined up with the real-world horizon or a little below. This is heavily acerbated by Apple inexplicably putting the window drag handles and close box on the bottom. Worn sitting bolt upright (or standing), I find the AVP becoming uncomfortable in 10-15 minutes or so, even after months of experience using it. (By contrast, I wear it for hours while reclined). This is probably going to take both new hardware (at least 75% lighter) and software tweaks to resolve.

Cost: In what I'm sure is a controvertial take, I don't actually think cost is all that big an issue for the AVP. Which is good--because I can't believe they're going to be able to shave off both the necessary amount of weight and any significant amount of cost. If these were comfortable enough for all-day use, I think many more people would be willing to absorb that cost. If they could make one within 2-3x the size and weight of a pair of side-shaded glasses, I bet they could sell them for twice the current price.

Apps: I've said this before, but I'm still waiting for any app that I could look at and say "this app works so much better in visionOS that I would choose to use it there rather than on a Mac/iPad/Phone." Apple absolutely needed to have a bunch of first-party or ready-to-go licensed stuff at release, and they didn't. And they've barely added anything at all since then (two or three 5-minute episodes of spatial video). And the games selection is abysmal. None of the toolsets (Godot Vision, Unity, Unreal) are anywhere close to ready, even now; the very few games released with them have been done with extreme assistance and custom versions. And there just aren't enough devs out there who could write to the RealityKit Apple SDKs, even if they were for some reason willing to give up all hope of cross-platform (beyond Apple) compatibility.

The real problem, though, is that Apple doesn't seem to be aware of--or is in complete denial about--how terribly, terribly badly they handled this release. It should not have gone out the door probably for another two years. Having decided to push it out in this state, they needed to be ready with enough experiences, apps, and the like on day one to overcome the pain points. Instead, they seem to have pitched it over the wall and then gone on to other things.

It's Apple. They've got all the money in the world, and they can reverse the fortunes of visionOS, although maybe not the current incarnation of the AVP. But they need to be taking swift, decisive, and probably expensive action now to correct course, and I can't see any signs that they're doing so.

 

[MrRtd]

All this VR stuff is never going to become mainstream like smartphones because most people just don't like wearing things on their face unless absolutely necessary.

This is the reason contact lenses were invented, and even almost all the most pro-mask people during the pandemic no longer wear masks everywhere, and I feel the pro-VR folks choose to ignore that reason.

When VR equipment becomes tiny and as none irritating as wearing contact lenses and/or hearing aids then it'll finally have a chance at widespread adoption.

 

[kgb999-again]

As a dev, I'm still just working on my app. I had no intention of rushing anything out and was planning a visionOS 2.x release the entire time.

I'm not sure the folks "analyzing" this stuff actually understand dev cycles at all.

What they understand are product sales and marketing cycles.

If developers take years to push out working apps .... not even PLANNING on releasing before some unnanounced future second-gen OS version, even ... people who bought the device hoping to enjoy it today simply don't have much to do with their devices.

This results in the early adopters not having anything to show off with their expensive toy that might make others want to experience what they are able to experience.

This results in other people thinking "why the hell would I spend $3500 for a VR headset that literally can't access the existing VR ecosystem and doesn't have any software of it's own to speak of?".

This results in the wider consumer market just not buying the headsets (which is where we appear to be at the moment).

The end result is whenever you get around to actually releasing your software, the size of the available hardware universe is likely going to be much lamer than if you and fellow developers had prioritized getting a stream of interesting things into user's hands more quickly.

 

[kgb999-again]

All this VR stuff is never going to become mainstream like smartphones because most people just don't like wearing things on their face unless absolutely necessary.

This is the reason contact lenses were invented, and even almost all the most pro-mask people during the pandemic no longer wear masks everywhere, and I feel the pro-VR folks choose to ignore that reason.

For the record, pro-mask people during the pandemic no longer wear masks everywhere because ... the industry invented a vaccine that has been widely deployed and there isn't a pandemic anymore.

If there were still a pandemic, or if another one emerges, we'd still happily be wearing masks. Because we aren't morons.

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

The guy who thinks it will be bigger than the smartphone is delusional.

I mean there's a possibility with AR glasses. No one knows yet.

What we do know, is that if we could magically produce perfect AR glasses today, the result would be something that would have basically all the functionality of a phone at a higher speed/quality in addition to lots of new usecases.

So I get their point. We'll have to see how that pans out over the next 20 or so years.

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

What are your personal experiences with VR/AR? Just wondering where your passion for it came from.

I've been using it since 2016 in about a dozen different industries. I think the appeal of placing any experience (included shared ones) into your audiovisual system has high potential, because that's a profound thing.

 

[kgb999-again]

If there was a nearly 2 decade hiatus...doesn't that kinda show consumers just aren't interested?

If the first versions came out in the 1990s and the market only existed for two years before dying from lack of interest...and then the Oculus Rift DK1 came out in 2013 and the market didn't take off (again)...why should we believe that things will be different this time around?

Consumers have repeatedly shown very little interest in this market for nearly four decades now. At what point do we listen to them and stop trying to make it happen?

What are you even babbling about?

You mean the "failed" market currently moving over 5 million VR headsets a year and generating billions?

 

[panoptotron]

I mean plenty of people have articulated the problems that VR/AR solves better than other devices, it's just that you haven't seen the right people describing this to you. The caveat being that the hardware is early and clunky and effectively solves problems right now for early adopters rather than average people.

The areas of communication, education, telepresence, fitness, health, design, computing can all be improved by VR/AR. You use examples like aerospace tech installing part, doctor's looking at patients, and students seeing a dinosaur, but the truth is, these are not solved problems as they can always get better, and VR/AR are going to be inherently better for this because humans deal with education and training and physical tasks better in 3D - this is proven across plenty of studies at this point.

I'm also struggling to find a time when people were clamouring for early computers in their homes. It wasn't until the tech matured that people actually saw a use for them in homes. So why not wait and see how the tech evolves? Would be better than ending up consigned to the aged like milk list.

Your last line is very revealing. “Better to just get on board with whatever Silicon Valley assures us will be the next big thing than to ever look like that one guy who said the internet was a fad.” is a mindset that Silicon Valley has relentlessly exploited for the better part of the last 15 years of stalled, diminishing, exploitative “innovation” (read: combining slot machine techniques & late night advertising, but on an iPhone).

Anyway I’ve been assured crypto was going to revolutionize the world for the last 5 years, that Uber was going to fix mobility, that Air B&B was going to maximize space utilization, improving communities, that the gig economy was going to improve millions of lives.

Not to mention the annual promises from Tesla, Apple that their newest product is “magic” (8% better at this constrained list of things).

The M-series chip did actually blow me away, so that’s cool. Good on them.

So anyway color me a luddite I guess. I’m sure the next iPhone is going going to be magic and you’re realllly gonna love it if you preorder.

 

[xoe]

This form factor was DOA anyway.

Edit: to add evidence

Spoiler: I mean...

View attachment 85168

Depending on your exact definition of form factor, I'm with you, Apple completely disregarded years of development of comfort focused physical design elements most of which have been become near universally standard (or available as a first party upgrade) on headsets for years. Like:

• A semi rigid strap.
• Rigid arms to attach the strap to.
• Stiff hinges for those arms to adjust angle.
• Front to back centre strap attachment point.
• A rear battery mount (in the case of the AVP the required battery would be too heavy).

I am confident that had they included most of these, that there would have been far fewer complaints about comfort, far fewer returns, and far more user hours on the device.

 

[Domicinator]

I’m not kidding, I honestly thought the general readership here was smarter than to have such nonsense hot takes on a product that’s been on the market for 5 months. I realize any Apple headline will come with some element of this but my god……

Full transparency—I use my Vision Pro almost daily. It is certainly not a product I’m ready to recommend to my family and friends yet, unless they’re people who have already expressed interest in devices like this before. The software is buggy, it’s too expensive, and the average user just isn’t going to want to deal with the baggage that comes with gen 1.

But the things it does do are remarkable, and it comes off (at least to me) as insanely uninformed when people just say OmG ItS jUSt ApPlE Vr goGGlEs FaiL!!!!!! This thing is a standalone computer. Full stop. It is crazy useful and I’m finding new apps every week that are blowing my mind. I use it with and without my Mac for work and personal tasks and I absolutely love it.

This is an unprecedented, slow, deliberate product launch. That doesn’t mean it sucks. It just means it needs time. I seriously don’t understand all the venom.

 

[hubick]

I feel like you're talking about a completely different thing. They were referencing AR rather than VR, and referencing technology of the future, not of today.

Why can't the clunkiness be fixed? Why can't the nausea be fixed? Why can't the eye strain be fixed? What makes these insurmountable issues that no time in the future can ever be solved? Will the tech require a long time to mature? Definitely, but that doesn't mean it's destined for failure.

Re: AR vs VR, same problem, minor difference in implementation.
Nausea is hard to fix because when your eyes send signals to your brain, it expects certain corresponding inputs from the fluid in your ears, and that doesn't happen.
Eyestrain is hard to fix because when your brain sees objects coming towards you, or going away from you, it expects to have to adjust the focus distance of your eyes to match, and due to a screen+lens at a fixed optical distance, that doesn't happen.
Those problems aren't necessarily insurmountable, but getting all that with AVP quality visuals into a convenient (sunglasses) form factor is just something we don't have the technology for. We can't just wave our hands and magic that tech. I'm not saying it's never gonna happen, just that I wouldn't expect it within at least a decade or more.

 

[kgb999-again]

The guy who thinks it will be bigger than the smartphone is delusional.

This guy is also imaginary.

 

[xoe]

Here's the thing, this doesn't solve a problem for Apple customers.

People pretend that nobody understood what the smart phone was going to do in their lives in 2005 or whatever, but if you talked to the really knowledgable people in 2005/6/7, they knew that mobile internet would be a gamechanger.

Sure the general public didn't understand quite how many small problems would be solved by having mobile access to all of the worlds information all the time everywhere, but in hindsight, it's obvious.

We're several years into high & mid-tier VR/AR systems being really good. Nobody has articulated a problem it solves better than a smartphone and a computer. And it's landing at a moment of tech saturation. Even regular people who aren't really thinking deeply about how they spend their time and attention have a vague awareness they are too addicted to their phones. The segment of the population clamoring for EVEN MORE IMMERSIVE experiences is truly a tiny slice at this point.

I imagine if they got them down to the size of a pair of glasses, wireless, and for the cost of under $1k, people might get into it. But then again, why are you spending $1k to solve the same problems your $1k phone and $400 TV already solve? To solve it better? In a cooler way? It's a better experience?

You don't have to trust me. Just look at the marketing for these devices. It's an aerospace tech installing parts with an overlayed map. A doctor looking a patient with an overlay. A student seeing a dinosaur in 3D.

Pssst. Those are all solved problems. None of those fields are clamoring for this tech.

if you talked to the really knowledgable people in 2005/6/7, they knew that mobile internet would be a gamechanger.

When I was about 13 years old in the late 90s or early naughties (I forget when exactly) I bought myself a Palm OS PDA, bought a WiFi adapter for it and used a remote desktop app to do instant messaging, email, web browsing and more. I knew that it would soon be possible to perform all these tasks using mobile internet of some kind with dedicated on device applications (I expected it to be wimax, so I was wrong about the specific tech), if this was obvious to a literal child well before the iPhone came out then it had to be obvious to just about everyone interested handheld tech at the time.

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

Your last line is very revealing. “Better to just get on board with whatever Silicon Valley assures us will be the next big thing than to ever look like that one guy who said the internet was a fad.” is a mindset that Silicon Valley has relentlessly exploited for the better part of the last 15 years of stalled, diminishing, exploitative “innovation” (read: combining slot machine techniques & late night advertising, but on an iPhone).

Anyway I’ve been assured crypto was going to revolutionize the world for the last 5 years, that Uber was going to fix mobility, that Air B&B was going to maximize space utilization, improving communities, that the gig economy was going to improve millions of lives.

Not to mention the annual promises from Tesla, Apple that their newest product is “magic” (8% better at this constrained list of things).

The M-series chip did actually blow me away, so that’s cool. Good on them.

So anyway color me a luddite I guess. I’m sure the next iPhone is going going to be magic and you’re realllly gonna love it if you preorder.

You can be skeptical all you want. I'd even encourage it. The issue is when you go from skepticism, skip right past pessimism, and end up at doomer-ville where what you say is law, you know the future, it will never work, written in stone. A lot of people make this mistake and it just destroys conversations.

I used home PCs as an example because there were many people saying it's a fad, including the person most responsible for kickstarting the industry. You can use this as a basis for how VR has done so far, with the similar level of sales and revenue (adjusted for inflation and population growth) during the same period of time and see why the future is not yet written on this.

Your last line seems at odds with the conversation of VR. Why do you think iPhones barely seem different from the prior model? They're a mature industry. VR being an immature technology means it has massive leaps from generation to generation.

 

[blorft]

Your last line is very revealing. “Better to just get on board with whatever Silicon Valley assures us will be the next big thing than to ever look like that one guy who said the internet was a fad.”

Perfectly stated.

It's remarkable how many people are afraid of being wrong once for criticizing an idea that ends up taking off...and instead end up being wrong dozens of times over for hyping up idea after idea with obvious flaws that inevitably end up failing.

It seems like they're just hyping up any and every new idea because they're hoping that one of them will take off so that they can say "I was one early believer in this, before everyone else," so that they can appear intelligent and ahead-of-the-curve...

These people care more about appearing smart and predictive than they care about actually being accurate.

 

[RecentlyFreshSushi]

Who knew that the $3500 toy would be slow in attracting users and developers?

Yes... a toy which is really allergic to the kind of immersive fun experiences (read: videogames) for which the platform is most obviously useful. I think I understand Apples position on gaming, that it is a messy arena for their brand image, and they try to be "fun" without the often toxic or experientially ugly parts of gaming (online gaming culture, for example). I think it's clear that they looked at the relative failure of other VR ventures, recoiled at any of the associations "VR" and expecially "VR gaming" had, and pushed it away with as long a pole as possible. Between literally feeling physically ill, having your personal space violated (granted digitally), or damaging nearby objects as you get too immersed and forget you're still in your living room, VR is often a mess to the end user who isn't invested in the cool factor of the experience up-front. But leaving big-g Gaming off the list of things this product is for... leaves you with a large-air-quotes COOL technology promising the potential for new revenue streams, but not a very deep well of marketable use cases.

 

[blorft]

You can be skeptical all you want. I'd even encourage it. The issue is when you go from skepticism, skip right past pessimism, and end up at doomer-ville where what you say is law, you know the future, it will never work, written in stone. A lot of people make this mistake and it just destroys conversations.

We don't need to pretend to know the future because we can look at the past. Bt your own admission in previous posts, the VR market has existed for nearly 40 years and we can see that consumers just do not seem to care about it. You even mentioned a two-decade hiatus - not just a period of slow development because technologies needed to mature, but a genuine hiatus because there was no interest in pushing the idea forward.

Optimistim is good. I'd even encourage it. The issue is when you go from optimism, skip right past excitement, and end up at baseless promotion of some idea that not only lacks evidence but actually has plenty of evidence against it.

How long do consumers have to remain ambivalent before you accept that it's just not a popular concept?

 

[blorft]

This is an unprecedented, slow, deliberate product launch. That doesn’t mean it sucks. It just means it needs time. I seriously don’t understand all the venom.

Genuine question - how long do we need to wait before we call something a failure?

It's been five months. Apple is reported to have sold less than 100,000 units. There have been no updates on how many VisionOS apps there are available (and you know Apple would be shouting from the rooftops if the number were increasing rapidly). The WWDC segment on updates in VisionOS 2 was shockingly short. There have been reports that Apple has halted work on the second generation Pro model, perhaps to work on a cheaper non-Pro model.

Maybe some lighter-weight, much-cheaper, more-powerful AR / VR hardware in the future will be popular, but as Vision Pro stands right now...how much more evidence do we need before we admit that it's a failure?

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

We don't need to pretend to know the future because we can look at the past. Bt your own admission in previous posts, the VR market has existed for nearly 40 years and we can see that consumers just do not seem to care about it. You even mentioned a two-decade hiatus - not just a period of slow development because technologies needed to mature, but a genuine hiatus because there was no interest in pushing the idea forward.

Optimistim is good. I'd even encourage it. The issue is when you go from optimism, skip right past excitement, and end up at baseless promotion of some idea that not only lacks evidence but actually has plenty of evidence against it.

How long do consumers have to remain ambivalent before you accept that it's just not a popular concept?

It's a common mistake that people make thinking the past serves to predict the future. You can gleam some information from the past, but it simply cannot tell you the future in full. The AI field is a perfect example of this, and of your next point since there have been not one but multiple AI winters before neural networks became common place.

The VR 'market' has not existed for 40 years if we're using the correct implementation of the term. A market requires products, development, customers. A VR market has existed for about 1/4th of that time. The 40 years refers to simply how long VR headsets have existed.

You're using a strawman with your second to last point. I never ended up at a baseless promotion of some idea. I injected nuance into this topic when it was severely lacking it. I'm not here to say VR is taking off, get on the train or get left behind. I'm here to say let's wait and see, here's why it has potential and what needs to be done to enable it to reach that stage.

On your last point, I never said VR is a popular concept. I'll go on record saying it isn't one. Yet. Will it be one? We'll see. Is it definitively written in stone that it can't ever be one? No, and therein lies the mistake some commenters are making here.

 

[Darth_Buzzard]

Genuine question - how long do we need to wait before we call something a failure?

It's been five months. Apple is reported to have sold less than 100,000 units. There have been no updates on how many VisionOS apps there are available (and you know Apple would be shouting from the rooftops if the number were increasing rapidly). The WWDC segment on updates in VisionOS 2 was shockingly short. There have been reports that Apple has halted work on the second generation Pro model, perhaps to work on a cheaper non-Pro model.

Maybe some lighter-weight, much-cheaper, more-powerful AR / VR hardware in the future will be popular, but as Vision Pro stands right now...how much more evidence do we need before we admit that it's a failure?

The report you are referencing did not say it sold less than 100,000 units.

Also it's worth noting that success and failure are relative. Maybe Vision Pro is behind Apple's expectations or maybe it's on point, I don't know, but what is clear is the supply chain. Specific MicroOLEDs are needed for Vision Pro, and the worldwide supply of those in 2024 amounts to something like half a million, so Apple would have very low expectations for this from day zero, before it launched.

 

[BCGeiger]

We don't need to pretend to know the future because we can look at the past. Bt your own admission in previous posts, the VR market has existed for nearly 40 years and we can see that consumers just do not seem to care about it.

How long do consumers have to remain ambivalent before you accept that it's just not a popular concept?

Remember, 3D has come and gone in movies and TV many many times going back to the ‘60s and people don’t like it despite what all the pundits and tech heads insisted. I can see these scuba mask devices doing the same. The people in Marketing are all psyched up about them, but on the street a tablet or phone can do the same thing. Need a big screen? I got dual 28” 4k monitors on my desk that cost ~$900 total. These are expensive devices that don’t do anything I, and I expect a lot of people value. I don’t want to be isolated from the other people in the room when I watch TV or a movie or play a game. I don’t want to not know what’s happening in my office when I’m working. I don’t want to spend several times what I do now for that experience.

There is another issue with these nobody has mentioned. The idea of using them in the office can quickly become a digital sweatshop. It’s obvious when you take them off and aren’t working for a minute. I moved to a job at home so I can take a bit to stretch, or pet the cat, or look out the window, or comment on Ars. I don’t want an employer that would insist I use a device that literally straps my work to my face.

No thank you.

 

[rbryanh]

It's fairly obvious that displays and keyboards have become a barrier to the advancement of IT. They're the albatross on our desks, in our pockets, and – whether we know it or not – around our necks. It seems likely that the ultimate replacement for current interfaces will be worn or implanted. One can also imagine that in dreaming of a single solution, we're making the same mistake committed by mid-20th science fiction movies with their monolithic computers occupying city blocks and requiring their own nuclear reactors.

But is this it, or anything like it? Is MegaCorp, Inc. equipping their work force with it? Is every teenager in half the classrooms on earth being told to "Take that thing off or go to detention?" And most importantly, is every developer in the world scrambling to produce apps for it?

Nope.

I love riding a motorcycle, but there's no denying that it's always a pleasure to take off the helmet. But maybe that's just me. I hate wearing glasses and spent 15 years in a lock down, drag out war with my mother over my refusal to wear hats. There are fewer than a dozen people on earth allowed to put anything on my face.

 

[ReaderBot]

I’m really surprised that Apple got into this market. It just seems so incredibly niche. What’s their endgame here?

To gamble with their trillions of moneys on hand until they come up with the next iPhone. That's what all of capitalism has devolved into. The billionaire class literally have more money than they know what to do with.