The Apple Vision Pro has gotten off to a slow start, spurring management to rethink its plans for the device. Focused now on an entry-level device, likely called “Apple Vision,” it may require ia tethered Mac or iPhone in order to function.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
This cheaper device, codenamed N107, is now the focus of Apple’s Vision Products Group. The company hopes to bring that product to market as early as the end of 2025 — a plan that’s been in place since before the Vision Pro was first unveiled last year.
The problem: Apple is struggling to get the cost down while retaining critical features. It’s dealing with some difficult trade-offs.
Apple could strip out the EyeSight display — the feature that shows a user’s eyes on the outside — and reduce the specifications of the internal virtual reality screens. It also could use a less powerful chip and lower the quality of the augmented reality passthrough visuals, which show you the real-world views outside the device.
But then you’re left with a less appealing experience. Even at $1,500, the product would cost three times as much as rival devices from Meta Platforms Inc. — without the technological advances that made the Vision Pro superior to the competition.
Prototypes of the N107 also have a narrower field of view than the Vision Pro. And the company is considering making the device reliant on a tethered Mac or iPhone. That would let Apple save money on the processing power and components needed to make the Vision Pro a fully standalone product.
It’s less of a priority, but Apple also is still working on a second-generation version of the Vision Pro. That model is called the N109 internally. It looks much like the current model but includes a faster processor and improvements to external cameras. Apple has also looked at ways to make the second version lighter and more comfortable.
The company has no plans to abandon the high end of the headset market, but this second-generation Vision Pro will take longer to arrive. Months ago, the company shifted a planned 2025 release to the end of 2026 at the earliest…
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MacDailyNews Take: This thing is so far following the Newton playbook. By the time it evolves into an affordable, lightweight, and useful product, hopefully, unlike with Newton, it won’t be too late.
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none of this is news. Gurman is simply retelling the obvious:
apple is developing a lower cost version of a new product even as it continues to develop a higher end version over time and explore various use cases.
The field of view was already too narrow in my demo, it takes away from the immersive experience, I wouldn’t pay $1500 ($2000+ with tax, AppleCare and accessories) for a worse experience. Take away EyeSight and the speakers (just require AirPods) sooner than the field of view. You can bet that a “cheaper” Apple Vision that’s tethered to a Mac or iPhone will require at least a 15 Pro Max/M1 Pro possibly obviating the savings. Wonder if we’ll see the AVP on the refurb store this year…
Apple isn’t “struggling” with this. It’s got a roadmap, and knows what it wants to do.
A consumer-targeted version for the whole family is in the works, but isn’t needed for another year while killer apps and content is created.
I love the idea that a cheaper, consumer version requires an iPhone and ear pods.
Would love to know what genius thought an Apple-branded version of Google Glass was a thing to pursue. People have already rejected this tech, and a lower cost version isn’t going to change that. Only the geekiest of geeks ever had any aspirations for this whatsoever. Outside of tiny tech circles, VR itself is pretty much a dead, non-starter for anything practical; heck, even AR is that. The only market I can see might be very young people, and with even California schools banning phone use during school hours, I don’t see how that makes any sense for even profit margins. Pretty stupid, Apple. Apple Hi-Fi, anyone?