A Wired wag will “bet everything that Apple’s Vision Pro will flop,” calling it ” a rare misfire” and an “unavoidable failure.”
This is not a “revolutionary” gadget, no matter how confident Tim Cook looks when he says it is. It’s a rare misfire, and a sign that Apple is losing its ability to turn tech-geek novelties into normie must-haves. It doesn’t augur the future so much as suggest that Cupertino doesn’t have a clear view forward…
[A]n Apple headset, no matter how nifty its specs, is still a big honking gizmo plonked between its wearer and the rest of the world, inherently a barrier more than a conduit…
The very basic truth that the appetite for daily-use headsets is simply not there has already damaged the Vision Pro’s reception; the normally rapturous public response to a big new Apple announcement has been tempered with skepticism this time around, with plenty of people pointing out that the VR/AR market is already littered with bold-named failures…
Apple isn’t the same company it used to be. When was the last behavior-shifting new Apple product launched, the type that gets absorbed into a daily fixture?
It’s a tough sell on a conceptual level, so no matter what the execution looks like, it’d be difficult to pull off. To make matters worse, the execution is flawed. If Apple had found a way to make a mixed-reality headset that weighed 4 ounces, or functioned more like regular glasses, maybe. Right now, though, it’s offering a marginally sleeker upgrade to a decidedly uncool-looking genre of headset. The nerd goggles look like nerd goggles…
This is an antisocial device, one which the average person would be wholly reasonable to reject and even ridicule… [T]his yassified Oculus is proof that even Apple can make missteps. One can only hope that the unavoidable failure of Vision Pro might clear the company’s sights, galvanizing actual innovation instead of this disappointing foray into gimmickry.
MacDailyNews Take: There is no evidence in this article that Kate Knibbs has ever tried Apple’s Vision Pro or that she’s even bothered to watch Apple’s explanatory video presentation (or that she has even a shred of imagination).
Knibbs instead admits that she’s based her opinion of Apple’s Vision Pro on Lauren Goode’s hand-ons article from the same publication, Wired, to which, of course, she links, in what reeks of yet another Wired self-promotion; writing articles about articles. Generative AI could do it better.
BTW, in two days, Apple’s 9:21 “Introducing Apple Vision Pro” video has over 25 million views on YouTube alone. There’s no telling how many views Apple.com has received of the same video; tens of millions for sure. Over a hundred million for the live WWDC23 keynote address, easily. This does not indicate a lack of interest from “normies.”
This is not an “VR/AR headset.” It’s a platform (yes, Vision Pro can be a “VR/AR headset” whenever you want it to just do that). Previous failures in the “VR/AR headset” game from a raft of outfits from Google to Microsoft to Meta are meaningless as none of those possess what only Apple has: the ability to produce the entire widget. Only Apple has the custom silicon required, the custom operating system, the ecosystem and the interoperability it provides; no other company on earth can do what Apple has done here. Another bonus is that this is not as knockoff-able as cobbling together pretend iPhones with Qualcomm processors and skinning Linux to mimic iOS as much as possible and peddling them “Buy One Get One Free” to the undiscerning.
“The VR/AR market is already littered with bold-named failures” because they don’t have even a fraction of the ingredients required to do even a “VR/AR headset” properly, much less create an entire spatial computing platform.
This is a first step. Yes, it’s not yet at the smartglasses phase (that’s at least a decade away); the 128K Mac wasn’t at the M2 MacBook Air phase, either.
Untold millions will buy the Apple Vision Pro and its successors. Vision Pro sales will start out small, to the early adopters. These customers will show their friends and family – and sales will blossom. Just like the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods.
Apple’s ecosystem is too strong and the Vision Pro is too compelling a portal into the ecosystem to fail.
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Some idiots have, to quote Monty Python, “as much imagination as a caravan site”. Meanwhile, many of us are looking forward to the day, hopefully not too far in the future, when Supercomputer = iPhone + Vision Pro.
Agree. Wired is an old woke loser version of appletv. Irrelevant garbage for a long time riding on misearned reputation. Cancelled them long ago. But it’s nice that they sealed themselves into the earned oblivion of irrelevance.
You know in a way, it’s kind of nostalgic reading that blurb. I was almost expecting the mantra of “Apple is doomed” to be invoked.
I Must admit that I was somewhat sceptical about the project prior to the launch, but having seen Apple’s video, it looks as though they have sweated the details which others simply ignore.
There are lots of tiny details which show that the project has been created to be used, it’s not just a toy for occasional use. The way that the interface subtly changes when another person walks into the field of view is very well executed. Eliminating lag sounds simple, but is quite challenging. Apple seems to have solved that. Most commentators concentrate on the headset. The important thing to look at is the interface and the operating system. That’s the part which is going to make a difference.
The number two rule for getting media attention: go boldly against the flow in the hopes of getting broadly quoted. (Reporters will want to drop opposing views into their articles. If everyone is positive you have a better chance of being quoted if you go negative with gusto.)
The number one rule: be accurate and compelling.
Didn’t know that female ‘journalists’ could engage in the same circle jerk analytics that the male pundits do
Well, in TODAY’S world, that depends on how you define a ‘female’….
Another “Ballmer”.
ahhhh good old Monkey Boy…..I remember it…..developers developers….developers
This never gets old!
Oh he was… and quite past it.
MDN when you talk about ecosystems you left out one HUGE component and that is corporate partner buy-in. This completes the whole widget for product success.
I don’t agree with MacDailyNews’ response to Kat Gibbs article. Why should there have to be evidence that she watched the video or tried the headset? Her argument isn’t about its technical capabilities – it’s about how this is still a dorky looking headset that isolate people rather than bring them together. Even with the addition of those freaky looking projected eyes, this device is exactly that.
The other argument – that Apple’s device is not a product but a platform – is a weird one: it’s ok to be a dorky looking device as long as you’re a platform??? Anyway, the father of the iPod and co-inventor of the iPhone, Tony Fadell, doesn’t agree with MacDailyNews. He said “platforms don’t become useful products. Useful products become platforms.” Oh, and he said the same thing as I did after watching its introduction: “Apple has jumped the shark”.
Well, then, you’re an imagination-free idiot, too.
Fadell has no hand in the future of computing – spatial computing – for a reason.
Fadell is wrong.
“Useful products become platforms.” Exaaactly, Tony.
— MacDailyNews, June 7, 2023
Computing in 3D space is how we should have been computing all along, but the technology wasn’t ready for several decades… Don’t let the the Vision Pro’s ancillary features – watching giant 3D movies, playing giant 3D games, taking 3D photos and videos, etc. – drown out the fact that for just $3,500, you can own and use the world’s first spatial computer – a Mac on your face! – that allows you to compute anywhere and everywhere.
Apple’s Vision Pro is a tremendous achievement and a very strong start to a whole new platform.
– SteveJack, MacDailyNews, June 6, 2023
Some people simply need more time to understand a product I guess 🤔
I’ll take it from the inventor of VR over the sour grapes of a washed up inventor of a discontinued product and thermostat spyware, thanks.
Palmer Lucky didn’t invent VR – even when I did a project in VR in the late 80s – before Lucky Palmer was probably born – they had been doing VR headsets for decades. All he did is make the first popular consumer version.
But fair point about choosing who you listen to. And Fadell may be “washed up” – but he inarguably knows what makes successful products and platforms, having a part in two of the biggest consumer successes of all time.
I agree. Her point is valid – it is a dorky-looking headset. It will isolate people, and some proponents have already noted this and called it a good thing. Yeah, that’s how darkened some folks’ souls are.
This is an isolating technology, not an enabling one (except for a very few). You can control it with your hands and voice? Awesome. I’m looking forward to the videos of the social outcasts “dancing” in their dark rooms in this.
The isolating component can’t be overstated. Have we learned nothing from the destructive nature of social media? For shame, Apple.
This is overselling a niche gadget that nobody wants or needs. And of course, it has all of the Google Glass potential for completely backfiring.
Where is the skinnable OS? Where is the mid-tower?
Step down, Tim Cook.
Going in I was 100% certain that I would wait for gen 3. After seeing the demos, and especially reading the “first looks” of people I trust like Gruber, Paul Hudson, and others, I now and looking forward to ordering day.
I’m retired and so don’t throw around money like I used to, but this morning I made a couple of phone calls and secured some contract programming work just so I could set aside my “Vision Pro” budget. I don’t normally do stuff like that.
It is now so clearly the future, and of course future versions will be much better and less cumbersome, but I can’t wait that long.
I wonder how long until Apple offers a version of the MacBook Pro that doesn’t have a screen. Lighter stronger and cheaper, with no need to pay for the expensive high-end screen they have now.
Now that’s the use case I was looking for. Simple keyboard that has a high end processor and no screen. Like a portable server. Or maybe just put the cpu and storage, peripheral connections in the battery with no screen.
I work all day at a screen normally with headphones on, so I don’t see much difference wearing a Vision Pro. How much is high end apple monitor these days anyway….
Haven’t agreed with a MDN take this strongly in a long time. We all just saw the future. Just like the first demo of the Mac, the first demo of the iPod, the first demo of the iMac, and the first demo of the iPhone. The paradigm has shifted in a single 30-minute burst of imagination and technical excellence.
Yeah, this is an early adopter product at this point, and the mass-market version is a couple of years away. Yeah, the battery life sucks. Yeah, it’s probably a bit too heavy. Yeah, there aren’t (enough) killer apps yet. But remember the original Mac? The first-gen iPhone? Neither of those was ready for the mass market either.
And yet, look where we are today.
The naysayers are wrong, much as Dvorak and Ballmer were wrong, wrong, wrong.
For all of you who thought Apple had “lost it” after Steve’s death, I hope you realize what giant strides they’ve been making, behind closed doors, over the past five years.
Yes, the paradigm has shifted to a heavy over priced sleek geek gadget tried and failed by others to be used in oblique isolation the majority will say no associate with one another and stick to reality.
Your braggadocio compels you to FALSELY associate this device with naysayers of the past talking other products which is misleading and not applicable.
No one knows where this will go, not even you over hyped Apple fanboy…
The more the press and wanna-be-experts call it a flop, the bigger the success will be.
I think the potential is amazing and as a creative professional, I can see how this could be a really interesting way to edit video and work on content.
The initial version is far too expensive for me but that said, I said the same thing about the Apple Watch Ultra when it came out but then I tried one on in the store and well, sigh, there’s one on my wrist now…
Some people need to stop appealing to authority around here and learn to think for themselves. Also, believing in tech hype is not thinking – it’s desperate and immature wishcasting. Grow up, hype bois.
Nothing says obvious more than a cliche that states the obvious: “Apple isn’t the same company it used to be.”
It’s always funny when people say that crap. They say it every new product. People just don’t seem to understand that this gen 1.0. iPhone 1.0 is very different than what’s now. And people that haven’t even thought of getting a VR headset will buy it (me). Healthcare simulation is going to be unreal with it. Apple will disrupt this industry
It’s certainly a riskier play, given it messes with our perception and therefore our very humanity. Hence the need for avatars, always-visible hands etc.
It will be more like the iPad than the iPhone, as use will be limited to entertainment/education/business, in the home/school/office.
But it’s also laying the platform for the inevitable Vision non-Pro AR glasses, which will be the true iPhone killer.
I seem to remember the pundits predicting the IPhone would fail miserably.