Apple Vision Pro, Objects in (the) Vision Pro might not be closer than they appear.

Since Apple launched Vision Pro, everyone has been talking about the wild demos, & wilder prices. There is even a video of how everyone in apple park watching the event live gasped when the price was announced. It "starts" at $3499.?

If there is one article you should read on Apple Vision, & Meta, it should be this. In this article, Benedict Evans talks about the state of AR, VR, apple & Meta's version of the future & lot more. I certainly enjoyed reading it, & I think you should read it too.

What has changed?

AR and VR devices have been catching people's fascination for some time; however, they never took off. Enter Meta, a company that decided VR is the future & decided to invest over $35bn.?

Enter Apple with Vision Pro. The choices made by Apple while building this device are fascinating. It's interesting because it shows what Apple thinks about the future.?

First thing first, Vision Pro is an AR device & not a VR device.

What does that mean??

It means that it is supposed to augment real-world scenes, not create an immersive virtual environment, something that Meta has been trying to push.?

Meta believes the future is you living inside the internet, whereas Apple believes you can use that environment to create a bubble wherever you are.?

Who is right about the future, Apple or Meta?

It is hard to tell. But one thing is sure Apple believes that people would need a super high resolution, hand gesture control, and an eye-tracking system that works seamlessly with existing Apple products like iPhones & MacBooks. This last part is very important. It has to work seamlessly with the existing lineup.

Apple Vision Pro will disappoint many people because chances are that it will not do any pro-level stuff that the enthusiast community has been hoping for. Apple doesn't care if the headset (at least for the near future) supports a great gaming experience.?

Does Apple know what the device will be used for? They have some ideas, but I don't think even they are clear. For example, it's been positioned heavily as a content consumption device or TV replacement, but the 2-hour battery is not great for content consumption. We have seen this story play out many times, iPhone limited battery to 5 days battery of Android phones.?

Apple has done this many times; for example, when they released the iwatch, a lot of emphasis was on aesthetics and fashion. It was also positioned as an iPhone extension. However, over time apple understood why people are using the product & it has now started positioning it as a health tracker.?

Apple's approach has always been to build a product that satisfies limited use cases, but you can count on it to nail down the execution—for example, Vision Pro is about seamless transitions and super-high res screens.?

Is this the iPhone moment for AR/VR

Reasons why I think its wrong to compare Vision Pro with iPhone

• When the iPhone was announced, people were already buying phones; currently, people are not buying AR or VR headsets.
• It's highly unlikely with these price points & the device type, Apple will sell Vision Pros as much as iPhones.?

Last but not least is pricing;

Is the pricing absurb, maybe but when you think about it original Macintosh, which was over $7,000 (adjusted for inflation) when it launched in 1984.

I think Apple is trying to present the best-case scenario to the world. iPhones didn't sell that much in the initial years. Hence it would take some time before Vision Pro starts selling, but I don't think people (3-4 years down the line) would hesitate to pay that much. For example, take the apple watch ultra; it is priced much higher than the normal iWatch, positioned specifically for athletes. However, pricing or positioning has not stopped normal people (who do not fall in the target audience) from buying ultras over the regular version. I also expect a cheaper version to be released, a non-pro version maybe without the i-sight feature.?

Ultimately it will boil down to how many devices can Apple sell with this pricing & would those numbers be considered a success?

Whatever happens, once more, Apple's hardware launch has followed the same pattern. Apple launches a product, everyone laughs at it (remember when they removed headphone jacks), good memes are generated, & then Apple makes much money. In the case of Vision Pro, the last part is yet to be seen & it could be a long time before we get to know it.?

As Benedict rightly points out, "future takes a lot of time to arrive".?