You can read the Wall Street Journal article on Apple News+ here.
If you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you can read the article here.
Without enough killer apps, certain users have found the device less useful and are opting to sell it … There has been a significant slowdown in new apps coming to the Vision Pro every month. Only 10 apps were introduced to the Vision App Store in September, down from the hundreds released in the first two months of the device’s launch, according to analytics firm Appfigures.
I think this is the key differentiator. The iPhone was compelling enough that people kept using it notwithstanding the lack of apps. That does not seem to be the case with Vision Pro, at least at this point.
I’ve heard very few, if any, complaints about the lack of apps on the Vision Pro. Most of the comments from podcasters seem to be about the lack of content. And if the VP is seen as mainly a content device it may not be competitive at 50% of its current price.
I honestly don’t know where this product category is going for Apple. I’ve done the demo and the Vision Pro is impressive, but I don’t think that’s enough, especially at this price point.
Very few people say they’ve found it useful to the point that it now seems essential to them. Most Vision Pros seem to have been sold to rich people as expensive toys and to fanboys who have to have the latest thing from Apple. I don’t even know of any significant business or government niches that have adopted it wholeheartedly and now consider it indispensable.
The iPhone was different. Everyone already knew they needed a phone so they only had to ask themselves “why not this one?” I’ve also seen people justify buying an Apple Watch by saying “I need a watch anyway.”
But almost no one needs an AR headset at this point, and it’s still too big, cumbersome, and expensive to be the kind of easy sell that the first iPads, which didn’t make you look like a dork if you used them at the coffee shop, were.
Apple may still make a success of this by making the successor smaller, sleeker, more affordable, and with better battery life. But that remains to be seen.
I don’t disagree with you, it had a certain something, but I’m not sure that’s it, I think that the major differences are
The success of the iPhone and even the iPad makes lots of other things look like failures when they’re a longer term bet; and
the difference in price between even the first iPhone (which was massively more expensive that other on plan, but not comparable, phones) and the Vision Pro at £3.5k, $4k with lenses if you need them.
The iphone was iterated on a year after the first release with new features and the initial iphones were handed down or resold creating a secondary market.
Apple has made no effort or incentive for App creators to jump onboard the Vision Pro which sits atop the poor relationships Apple has with developers and opaque app store practices, many Developers have sat back and taken a wait and see approach.
The first home PCs were comparable in price to the vision pro even with inflation, and not many people bought them, but they ended up being successful.
& @geoffaire That’s true, but the leap to early personal computing devices from what came before was massive. The productivity benefits of apps like Lotus 123 and Word Star/Word Perfect/etc. over producing spreadsheets on paper and documents on typewriters was immediate and obvious.
Once you get past the wow factor, the Vision Pro mostly seems suitable for entertainment, but that’s a lot of money to spend on a one-person entertainment device that still doesn’t have a lot of content being produced to take full advantage of it.
Apples problem is it’s not easy to allow someone else to use the device. When I got the 1st iPhone I could just hand it to someone. The Vision Pro isn’t like that you have to turn on guest mode abd they go through a setup. I truly think if people could experience immersive video they’d be bought in.
I think this is a long-game type device, not something that was ever going to explode right out of the gates (especially at the price point). I do think the article and others here who have said the same are onto something with Apple needing to incentivize developers bringing certain apps and content to the device. They should do some targeted subsidizing of apps.
I don’t quite buy in to the oft-repeated trope on the podcasts that developers aren’t developing for Vision Pro because they are mad at how Apple is treating developers. To me, that’s trying to cram reality into a narrative that feels righteous. It certainly might be true for some, but I think largely it’s a math calculation…many developers aren’t yet seeing there will be a good ROI on the effort needed to make that app.
Give it a few more years, subsidize/sponsor some developers to bring apps, drop the price of the next “low-cost” version, and things could start getting interesting.
I think the resentment against Apple means they’re not going out on a limb to help Apple make the VP a success. They have to see a financial payoff for themselves as having a significantly better than even chance of paying off.
And that’s smaller devs. Meta and Google got cut off from billions in revenue when Apple let users choose to block tracking. They certainly don’t want to do anything to help Apple dominate the AR market the way they do the tablet market. Instagram could probably be awesome on the VP, but it’s not likely to happen unless Meta sees a financial downside to not doing it.
ROI is definitely a factor, but I think Developer relations is also a significant factor as is the price of the device in the first place for a Dev to understand how their app works as this isn’t something you can really simulate on a Mac.
That is entirely possible. OTOH bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is saying “Into 2027, the team is considering launching smart glasses on par with the Meta Ray-Bans, as well as AirPods with cameras. The idea is to salvage the billions of dollars spent on the Vision Pro’s visual intelligence technology,”
Apple seems to have more irons in the fire than usual.
Seems very strange. How would they do that? Tiny cameras at the ends of little arms sticking out the sides to clear people’s hair and glasses? Also, you wouldn’t be able to see what the camera was seeing unless it was projected to an iPhone or other device, which mostly wouldn’t be practical in real time. If the video feed was sent to glasses it would make more sense to put the cameras there.
As a person who wasted spent $4000 on this product, I was expecting more support FROM Apple! What impressed me most in the demo was the immersive videos. They showed a series of short videos for the types of things I expected them to follow through on. For example, some soccer highlights, a baseball game, etc. I figured, that makes sense, Apple TV+ has the Friday Night baseball package, so they will show off the amazing technology of the Vision Pro every Friday, right? Nope, an entire baseball season came and went and no immersive 3D video. I know this is technically possible because The Talk Show Live was filmed live this way (which I watched in the Vision Pro). Daring Fireball: The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2024
So if John Gruber can afford the gear to do this live, Apple can’t spend a few bucks to do it on some live sports?
So third party support is not what I’m upset about, I’m complaining that Apple as a whole clearly doesn’t care about this product. They have an entire movie studio at their disposal and nothing is done. There should be weekly releases of content from Apple TV+ in immersive 3D video. They have the money and the technology, spend the money Apple!
