The Apple Vision Pro spatial computer arrives in stores next week promising a personal movie theater wherever users go and screen navigation at the tap of a finger. The most affordable model runs $3,499 while a higher-powered version reaches nearly $4,000. Why?
The high price owes to costs associated with production of the Vision Pro, as well as an initial focus on reaching professionals such as developers who could enhance the product with additional apps, analysts said.
“It’s a very early product,” Ben Bajarin, analyst at research firm Creative Strategies, told ABC News. “There’s a scale and manufacturing challenge that Apple is up against.”
The price reflects the costly development and production behind the Vision Pro, which required the company to build components specifically for the headset, analysts said.
Laminated glass operates as a surface for the cameras and sensors on the device, while a flexible Light Seal helps mold the product to a user’s face, Apple says. A brand-new R1 chip, Apple says, allows the machine to process inputs from a person’s eye and hand motions.
“If anything, the price is on the low side given the technology that’s packed into this,” Avi Greengart, lead analyst at research firm Techsponential, told ABC News.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple could have price it at double its current cost and sold out the initial pre-orders.
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AVP will fail. The main reason is, like all the rest, it’s goggles. Nobody wants to wear goggles.
“No one wants an iPhone, it’s useless!”
“No one wants an Apple Watch, it’s too expensive!”
“No one will wear AirPods, they’re so ugly!”
Exactly. Don’t want a AVP, don’t buy it. There will be plenty of others that will.
I don’t want to wear goggles, but I would like to feel like I’m courtside at an NBA playoff game, for 200 bucks. Or to get a movie theater experience at home.
I think interactivity will need to be worked out, since it would be weird/expensive to have a couple or family sitting around all wearing goggles watching a movie together. On the other hand, it could be great for long-distance couples, people who miss their kids while traveling, or people who live alone and prefer buying goggles to buying a traditional AV system.
Yes, thought of goggles…who wants? Thought of spatial computing…who wouldn’t want? When, how and why almost $3500 are relevant questions, but I have a sense a few yrs from now, we’ll understand.
Like all technology, the cost will come down and its capabilities will increase. At @ $3499 VP is only a $300 more than I paid for my 15” McaBook Pro with an M1 and some extras. Therefore, the current price isn’t out of line.
The real question is will programmers be able to write software the maximizes VP’s potential and minimizes its drawbacks. Only time will tell.
In 1984 the prognosticators as laughed are the idea of a mouse. “No one will use it” they cried. In 1997’s iMac without floppy drives and only having usb ports, “No one will buy one because you can’t hook it up to anything” they declared. Just wait and see how the market responds. The future is a slippery thing. It’s only possible to completely grasp the future once it has become the past.
This is the best article I’ve read on the AVP and Apple’s strategy with it: https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-reasons-the-apple-vision-pro-is-secretly-brilliant/
Apple could of course sell it at an even bigger loss to start (they’ve definitely spent more on this product than all they’ll get back in sales for months to come) but that’d be besides the point.
They can’t make them any faster and the price selects for Apple super-fans and tech enthusiasts and filters out the casual users who aren’t going to use, promote and give feedback on the AVP to make gen. 2 and yet-to-be-developed apps as good as they can be.
Apple can comfortably sell all the units they can make at this price for the rest of the year, then they can get ready to release a more budget-friendly model with a more mature OS and ecosystem that will actually appeal to the masses.
I applaud Apple for pushing this technology out of the nest and into the world where developers can make of it what they will. The potential is intriguing.
It doesn’t offer enough to make it worth as much as Apple is charging. The quest 3 is good enough and does pretty much the same things for a fraction of the cost.