TL;DR: Apple may have canceled plans for a lower-cost version of the Apple Vision Pro headset, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The reasons are not provided, but cost reduction may be a factor. Apple still expects to ship 400,000 to 600,000 headsets in 2024, with a second-generation version expected in 2027.
These articles are getting ridiculous. A product that was never announced based on a concept that hasn’t been released yet might be cancelled? Stop the fucking presses…
As much as we all talk about the long term vision being a more accessible version, did people actually expect that to happen quickly? The $3500 version they’re doing is priced insanely aggressively compared to the rest of the market for the tech in it. It was never going to happen overnight.
“Cancelling” a rumored product that they were at best in the exploratory phase of is pretty disingenuous.
I have a hard time believing they ever had plans for a low-cost version, though I’m sure they expect to be able to eventually bring down the price of the current version. The problem with current AR/VR headsets is that they suck. They’re not powerful enough to track motion at actual speed, or display in sufficient resolution and with properly adjusted lenses, so people get motion sickness while wearing them, or at least find it uncomfortable. The breakthrough of the Vision Pro is that it establishes a baseline experience where you can stick a virtual item in real space and it stays exactly there, and really looks like it’s actually there in the space. This requires hideously expensive, absolute bleeding-edge of silicon design hardware to make possible. A budget version would be a different category of product entirely, with a terrible user experience.
At some point they’ll get the price point for 2024’s technology down, while presumably still charging a premium for the then-current bleeding-edge technology, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close enough to that point to think about it as a distinct product yet. It’ll just be an older Vision Pro.
The problem with current AR/VR headsets is that they suck. They’re not powerful enough to track motion at actual speed, or display in sufficient resolution and with properly adjusted lenses, so people get motion sickness while wearing them, or at least find it uncomfortable. The breakthrough of the Vision Pro is that it establishes a baseline experience where you can stick a virtual item in real space and it stays exactly there, and really looks like it’s actually there in the space. This requires hideously expensive, absolute bleeding-edge of silicon design hardware to make possible.
Also pixel density.
Reading text on anything before the vision pro is going to make your eyes bleed. Vision pro looks like it finally crosses the minimum threshold for text clarity.
3-4 years is certainly quite a different product cycle compared to everything else
I‘d be super interested to see what Apple‘s “low” cost version of the Vision Pro would look like. Assuming the Vision Pro is already the bare minimum for them, with some weird Apple-unlike compromises like the external battery. The outside display seems to be an obvious thing as it won’t make a huge difference to the actual user (at least directly), but I have a feeling Apple won’t ever ship a Vision headset that walls the user off.
Maybe that’s the reason, there is no version of the headset that is cheaper with everything Apple wants it to be and have, so it simply won’t happen.
There’s nothing compelling about it even at $199.
