I think it isn't really chicken-egg, is what I'm saying. Devs were so hot to target iPhone from day one that the first or second major OS update added an entire infrastructure to make that possible. There was so much interest it made Apple back down! For the Vision Pro they had that on day one and it wasn't nearly enough to sell the thing to devs, because again, nothing did nearly enough to sell the thing to users.
Who cares if it’s pocket change for google or meta, nobody wants another Facebook app.
But imagine for a moment an alternate reality where they at least moderately tried to keep the cost down, and then further subsidized it, selling the headsets for $599 and made developer terms wildly attractive (like, your first 20 million in revenue having a 5% fee instead of 30%). It would cost Apple billions, but they pissed away more on the car idea with nothing to show for it. This could have launched a category, instead I predict a future more like Apple TV hardware where it's niche due to being 4x the price of what most people want to pay for the category.
Or they tried that, saw it's a tiny garbage market segment attended solely by photographer types who enjoy spending $10k to complain of being unsatisfied and a few others far less savory, and sensibly exited. Just like they explored FSD in concept and said no thanks, this will never work, let the morons throw their bad money after our good.
I don't know why it surprises people that a cash-rich, culturally insular company, with the world's premier brand in affordable luxury technology of genuine quality, should behave in accord with its own precepts rather than theirs. I've always found it more useful to learn about what I see in front of me, than distract my eyes with some fantasy of my own preference, and remain a fool. (For example, Apple is dogshit at wearables, always has been, always will be. You wear one because everyone wears one, although of course I have better, but they're awful!) But as I think I said nearby, I tried VR already and it sucks. I guess some folks need longer to catch on.
$3500 is, as I said, pretty close to petty cash even for a sole-owner LLC that needs taking at all seriously, and I would front that sum without a second thought out of my own personal pocket if I thought VR had legs, the same way I've put about $9k toward inference-capable hardware in the last two years because AI obviously does have legs. It's an investment in my career, or at least toward the optionality of continuing a career in software in a post-AI world, assuming I don't decide to go be an attorney or something instead.
I appreciate not everyone can drop a sum like that, like that. I can and I'm not ashamed of it. Why should I be, when it's exactly what I've worked the last 21 years straight to earn?
Plus, the hardware is just the initial starting point. Your initial outlay will quickly be eclipsed by the dev hours spent working on Vision versions of your app(s), and that's when the opportunity costs become particularly noticeable. Time spent on a Vision app that may have no real market for years is time you could be spending adding features, testing changes, fixing bugs, marketing, etc. Skipping on Vision Pro is really a no-brainer for most indie developers, at least for the foreseeable future.
Apple tried to focus on productivity and some light entertainment and didn't even throw the other two a bone by supporting a PC link feature. Particularly they didn't make a physical link possible - Wifi is not reliable/high bandwidth enough for most people, so those third party solutions aren't cutting it.
Apple users are mostly locked out of the existing PC VR ecosystem - Apple didn't have to rely on developers writing dedicated apps.
It "works for me".
It's not like there's much reason to care about comforts on short flights. Anyone can tolerate economy for an hour and you'd probably not get out your VR headset for a short hop either.
Regardless, you don't throw away your headset after a flight, obviously, so even if the ticket were half the price you'd still come out ahead after two or three trips.
This said, headsets like AVP improve the flying experience but don't magically solve it: they are still too heavy and uncomfortable to wear for more than 1-2 hours. That's why I'm betting on the more lightweight (and cheaper) sunglass-like products to actually win that market.
The headset is heavy, but I find that's much ameliorated by lying backwards a bit (which is easy to do in a business-class lie-flat seat).
VRChat, I agree, should absolutely be there and unrestricted. It wont be though. It isn't uncensored on Oculus either.
VR pornography is quite massive in Japan for instance. Huge in fact. The Vision Pro doesn't even have a DMM.com/Fanza app for that.
I don't think most users would even consider getting a device that doesn't allow them to view their existing catalog of purchases, pornography and not.
Again, this could've been solved by simply supporting PCVR.
> VRChat, I agree, should absolutely be there and unrestricted. It wont be though. It isn't uncensored on Oculus either.
I don't think the VR Chat app on Oculus is very popular. Most users are just going to run it via PCVR for better performance, feature support, etc.
Can you elaborate?
It just so happens that most of the more racy avatars also are more detailed/power hungry and run afoul of those limits.
Her gaming company you can read about here:
I think it's mostly the lack of users. Apple snubs mobile developers all the time, but since they gate access to a large chunk of well-paying customers, developers are ready to jump through any hoops.
If there were millions of Apple Vision Pro users I'm sure the developers would have followed, but it's of course a chicken and egg situation considering Vision Pro lack of content.