Apple employees outnumbered customers at Vision Pro launch in San Francisco’s Union Square::Apple’s new Vision Pro headset drew a sparse but eager crowd to San Francisco’s Union Square on Friday, for pickups and demos.
It’s $3500 of course there wasn’t a “mob scene” for it.
Yeah, they’re pricing themselves out of their own market. It’s been happening for years but the recent economic shifts are making it more apparent.
The MacBook Air was $3200 (which is more like $4500 in 2024 dollars) when it was announced in 2008. Early adopters pay for the future of these things and 200,000 AVPs have already been sold.
I don’t think the MacBook Airs launch is a good comparison.
Sure there was an early adopter tax on being one of the first “thin and light” laptops, but people already know what you can use a MacBook for, there was already a large value proposition in having a MacBook, the extra cost was entirely being more portable than it’s full size counterparts. Everything you can do on a Mac, just way easier to take on the go.
I’ve read a few reviews on it, watched MKBHD’s initial review, and outside of a few demo apps they point to the vision pro having no real point to it. Which if true, then it falls in line with existing VR headsets that are a fraction of it’s cost and in a niche market, being three times the cost of your competitors is not a good position to be
I’m almost thinking that Apple went too deep into AR/VR when it looked like there was a market for it. So over a year ago they knew this was dead-on-arrival. They’d already committed the R&D and all the facilities and materials for the first production run. Knowing its going to flop, and knowing they’d get only one shot to sell them, they hiked up the price to the point where they could extract the most money from diehard Apple fans before word got out it wasn’t worth it.
They sold out all 200,000 launch day units, so perhaps Apples only mistake was pricing it too low.
It’s competing with the varjo aero, not any of the low end ar tech so it’s actually half the cost of its competitor. It’s still way too expensive for consumers, but that’s not who it’s aimed at
I’d say it’s more that they did a preorder. The available units are spoken for. If you got one, you might show up and pick it up… otherwise it’s not like you can walk in the door and grab one from the store. Also, it’s not like an iPhone that you can just play with on display, you need to book an appointment to try it out, so yeah, it makes sense that people aren’t gate crashing the door, there isn’t anything for them to buy or try.
You will notice through the magic of math, that 3500 is over twice as much as 1500 for a device you cannot carry with you everywhere everyday. The competition space for the Vision Pro is not iPhones, but more like the iMac Pro.
Yeah, and everyone that has had hands-on time with it has had about the same story. It’s pretty cool, it’s pretty, it’s the best thing we’ve seen yet, it’s really expensive, it’s still uncomfortable, it’s use cases are still drastically numbered, the software market for it is still very lacking.
Oh yeah, and ecosystem lock in.
In the pics there are more punters than staff…
They are probably just being pedantic and saying “but those punters didn’t buy so they aren’t customers…”
I went to my local Apple Store yesterday morning and saw one person leaving with an Apple Vision Pro and maybe a few people inside trying it out. It wasn’t crowded at all. It seemed like the store was pretty overcrowded with employees, though.
On the bright side, I was able to get in and out with my purchase really fast!
Aren’t demos by appointment only? What a trash article.
I’d love to fiddle with one, but they don’t have very many demo slots. Only 8 an hour at that flagship store.
Also, I don’t have the cash to buy one, so the demo would purely be to address some curiosity. I’ll probably just wait until I can walk in and do a demo in a few months.
I wonder if it’s fully locked down like ipad, or more relaxed like a Mac where you have root access and can sideload any app you want. If it’s the latter, my interest will be significantly increased.
lol you’re dreaming if you think Apple is going to introduce a new computing platform and not wall its garden off so it can take a cut of all sales. That’s just how it is now, and every year they take a little freedom away from macOS. Mac users haven’t had true root for years.
