Apple Inc. is ramping up production of the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, setting the stage for a launch by February, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
What they call it is critical. It speaks to their vision for the product, and Apple does an exceptional job at having their vision stick. Removing the headphone jack launched wireless headphones to the moon.
Zero headsets are meaningfully capable of AR. “We’ll show you a high latency low quality poor color passthrough so you can sort of move around the room without removing your headset” isn’t AR. Projecting an absurdly low quality image onto glasses that show the world without doing any processing on it isn’t AR. Nobody is going to develop AR apps for either of those types of hardware because neither of those are useful. Phones are capable of limited AR, and those are used to the extent a phone is capable of, which is putting objects into your room to visualize them.
The Vision Pro is the first product out there that has the bare minimum hardware to even approach AR. Without Apple’s weight behind it, it would still be in a great position purely on the strength of its capability. With Apple and their software (including the already very rich and accessible AR libraries they’ve had in developer’s hands for iPhones for a while now), it’s almost impossible for it to fail.
$3,500 is expensive, but it’s absurdly cheap for the capability compared to the VR market. Without the passthrough and without the full computer, just the resolution of the display is already in the multiple thousand price bucket at a bare minimum. If they priced it at $10,000, it would still be completely unmatched for what it offers. The $3,500 price point is insanely aggressive.
What they call it is critical. It speaks to their vision for the product, and Apple does an exceptional job at having their vision stick. Removing the headphone jack launched wireless headphones to the moon.
Zero headsets are meaningfully capable of AR. “We’ll show you a high latency low quality poor color passthrough so you can sort of move around the room without removing your headset” isn’t AR. Projecting an absurdly low quality image onto glasses that show the world without doing any processing on it isn’t AR. Nobody is going to develop AR apps for either of those types of hardware because neither of those are useful. Phones are capable of limited AR, and those are used to the extent a phone is capable of, which is putting objects into your room to visualize them.
The Vision Pro is the first product out there that has the bare minimum hardware to even approach AR. Without Apple’s weight behind it, it would still be in a great position purely on the strength of its capability. With Apple and their software (including the already very rich and accessible AR libraries they’ve had in developer’s hands for iPhones for a while now), it’s almost impossible for it to fail.
$3,500 is expensive, but it’s absurdly cheap for the capability compared to the VR market. Without the passthrough and without the full computer, just the resolution of the display is already in the multiple thousand price bucket at a bare minimum. If they priced it at $10,000, it would still be completely unmatched for what it offers. The $3,500 price point is insanely aggressive.