I rarely use my Rift S these days - not because the hardware isn't good - but because the software experience is an absolute dog's anus. Wanted to play Beat Saber the other day. Turned on the PC. 25 minutes later, ready to open Steam. Whoops, now the Oculus app says its out of date. Another 10 minutes faff because what it actually meant was "you need to migrate to a Meta account". Then I had to sit through the tutorials again. Then Steam decided Beat Saber needed updating and took 45 minutes to download 800MB on gigabit fibre. Finally, after just about 90 minutes, I could play Beat Saber.
$3500 to not sit through that absolute omnishambles of a torture ever again? Sign me up.
Best $300 I’ve spent in the last 5 years.
wander works on the quest 2, but doesn't have 3d features in streetview.
However Google recently made the underlying APIs available so it will be soon
It's a strategic release aimed at devs and early adopters, the consumer level device will come in the future at a complete different price point. That's when mass customer adoption might happen.
Also Meta is struggling also because their device is a novelty without many great software. See a pattern?
....
You think that developers are going to create a thriving ecosystem of apps when there's no market until several years down the line? Bit of a Chicken or the egg problem isn't it?
Early-Adopter-category developers and buyers will wait to see what the Innovators discover.
It won't be the opening of floodgates, but I think it will be interesting enough.
The hardware is probably being sold near to cost, thus speeding up that side of the adoption cycle. And courting developers will allow them to build up the app ecosystem.
The Vision Pro seems to be more focused on the end user experience, so hopefully that will help Apple get their foot in the door with consumers. However, I've never used it so I cant say for sure. The company I work at will most definitely be purchasing them as soon as we can though, very excited to either be extremely underwhelmed or extremely impressed.
I don’t even know if it is ability, rather than unwillingness to invest the billions of dollars and 10+ years it would take to get something like this off the ground.
Meta's attempts are currently limited because the sticky use cases seem to be fitness and a little bit of gaming. When you have a device that is viable for some level of work, it's a somewhat easier sell. Apple will be testing this for work (and hybrid remote work) with staff and will have a strong idea as to how viable this is going forward.
I think the incentive is there for employers to favour these (fit more staff in physical offices; and suits remote work well) and that will push it into the general white collar world.
The rest of us will get the apple vision se in 2028 when the territory’s been mapped out
The Vision Pro is marketed as a device with the potential to replace or significantly augment a laptop and/or TV for a lot of users (I understand there are presently some asterisks needed there). And that's assuming no other novel, high value uses emerge.
Apple sells something like 7 million MacBooks per quarter. Many of them are well more than $2000. I don't think a $2,000 price point is a crazy barrier if the device is able to live up to what it could be.
"Smartphones" weren't the most dominant phone category until after the iPhone.
It's really hard to know until units start shipping though.
Are you sure it's not something else in your case?
Kinda happy they released the iPhone when I was capable of buying that, and this one now that I’m (potentially) capable of buying this.
https://palmerluckey.com/free-isnt-cheap-enough/
Quest headsets are indeed cheap but but perhaps sacrifice too much on the experience quality. People gotta want something before it can get cheap (not my words).
I personally love it, RE4 VR and the month I spent VR boxing every night was some of the most fun I’ve had gaming recently. But there’s limits to that sort of thing, especially which games get ported and VR’d. Apple doesn’t even need a suite of A+ games to get people to buy it, I don’t remember them showing any games in the launch.
I get why Apple pushed it up higher in the market. The first two years will be for developers and very early adopters.
This is like buying an expensive monitor/TV/casual gaming device baked into one.
Hell there’s people who buy $2000 TVs, even though most people buy the $500 ones. This is way more capable than just a new TV.
It's interesting though how counter it runs to John Carmack's philosophy where mass market accessibility is everything. I wonder if looking back people will rethink his contribution as actually holding things back.
It certainly seems like Meta is switching gears a bit with the Quest 3 going out to market at $500. It's going to be phenomenal value for what it is at that price still. But it's going to leave behind a significant segment of people for whom $299 was a palatable indulgence buy or gift for their children etc while $500 is not.
A few hundred thousand users with a massive amount of disposable income.
> Meta, today, has roughly the right price and is working forward to the right device: Apple has started with the right device and will work back to the right price. Meta is trying to catalyse an ecosystem while we wait for the right hardware — Apple is trying to catalyse an ecosystem while we wait for the right price. So the Vision is a device pulled forward from years into the future, at a price that reflects that. It’s as though Apple had decided to sell the 2007 iPhone in 2002 — what would the price have been?
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/6/15/vision-pro
Same reason Tesla started with the Roadster instead of trying to build a mass-market sedan first.
The potential thanks to the higher resolution is huge. If you ever tried to do any non-gaming task on an oculus, you realize how important resolution is for text. Forget games, this is an enabler for a disruption in user interface.
My biggest gripe to me, let it be either meta or apple, is the vendor lock-in. I'm not going to touch anything made by meta. But apple is not far.