[hourago]

The main problem I see with developing for VisionOS is the lack of reach. I expect that after the initial novelty the user base will be reduced further.

The closed development ecosystem of Apple is alluring because it offers access to its iOS devices.

But what makes it worth the effort to learn a new SDK, or even buy a MacOs device to develop for it, for just a few thousands of devices?

[TexanFeller]

Apple customers are one of the few consumer segments that don't mind paying for software. Apple captures a huge chunk of app revenue, massively outsized compared to their user base and far more than Android. One of the big reasons I don't try Android anymore is the last time I did so many of the apps were adware with no option to buy an ad-free version - I guess they don't bother because Android customers statistically won't pay.

[ramesh31]

>But what makes it worth the effort to learn a new SDK, or even buy a MacOs device to develop for it, for just a few thousands of devices?

This is a new official platform from Apple, not some random Google experiment. They don't do something like that willy nilly. This will be supported for decades to come now, and be the basis for who knows how many products. It's about getting in at the ground floor, a la iOS circa 2007.

[pavlov]

On the other hand you could also have got in at the ground floor for tvOS or watchOS, and probably don’t have much to show for it.

Not all Apple platforms are enormously successful for third parties.

[imwillofficial]

Those were both ancillary platforms meant to augment their main platform, computing.

This is different, this is a potential replacement for their core products.

[makeitdouble]

The iPhone entered a market that was already huge and relatively mature, to further expand it in value.

AR/VR is far from that. I hope Apple's entry boosts it a lot further, but comparing it to the iPhone feels like there's only disappointment in waiting, even if it fairly succeeds like the Watch does for instance.

[spicybright]

I'm not getting your logic.

AppleTV was supposed to be a new thing with people developing entertainment apps and games that fit with a TV, not for general computing.

The watch added to the iPhone and had unique apps to take advantage of the sensors.

Neither of these were tied heavily to a macbook or other general purpose device. Unless you mean computing as in anything digital that runs code. Which I wouldn't really call a platform.

VisionOS feels closer to an AppleTV. New hardware with a different paradigm that needs a unique API and new apps built for it.

That said it does seem more like a supplemental device to your macbook + iphone. I doubt many are going to buy it with the intention of it being their main means of computing.

Maybe define what main platform of computing and core product mean if you could?

[imwillofficial]

Both are wildly successful in their niche markets.

iPhone is a different class of market completely, not everyone needs a TV media center, everyone needs a phone.

I feel apple is better on this play to be more like the Mac or iPhone, than AppleTV or AppleWatch

[thyselius]

I hope you're right. I've had a US top 10 grossing game (Bowling) on Apple TV for years and the income it's not enough to pay one salary. We thought it could be a great gaming platform for people without PS/Xbox, but unfortunately this did not happen. Apple TV is probably great for Netflix etc though.

[pesfandiar]

The user base may be small but they'll be unusually wealthy.

[robwwilliams]

At some reputational risk—-

Is the Vision Pro actually that expensive at $3500?

A high/end LG OLED G3 77 inch TV @ $4,300

A Dell XPS laptop @ $4,000

A 2005 Honda Civic with 225,000 miles @ $3800

NBA season tickets mid-“club” level seats @ $4300 (does not include parking, dinner, transportation)

A Barcalounger power reclining loveseat @ $3120

An 11 x 18.5 ft outdoor storage shed made out of plastic and genuine steel frame @ $5274

You might need that Honda if you are barely scrapping by, but if you are like many HN readers then you know damn well that most of what you really needed was taken care of a long time ago.

Disposable income is disposable how you see fit.

I see fit to buy a Vision Pro after a short test-drive. And I expect to be amazed.

[Turskarama]

About half of the items you posted are not really comparable for a lot of reasons:

A high/end LG OLED G3 77 inch TV @ $4,300: Buy one of them to watch shows with your entire family. Want do do that with the Vision? You're either taking turns or forking out $14k for 4 of them.

A Dell XPS laptop @ $4,000: Can be used for many more things than the vision pro seems to be capable of. This is a work device, if you bought the vision pro could you _get rid of_ your work PC or would you need to have it anyway?

A 2005 Honda Civic with 225,000 miles @ $3800: I challenge you to trade in your car for a VR headset. Go on, tell us how much better your life is afterwards.

NBA season tickets mid-“club” level seats @ $4300 (does not include parking, dinner, transportation) A Barcalounger power reclining loveseat @ $3120

These two are actually comparable in that they're ultimately unnecessary luxury items.

An 11 x 18.5 ft outdoor storage shed made out of plastic and genuine steel frame @ $5274:

I'll just keep my lawnmower inside next to the shelf I keep my Vision Pro on.

These comparisons are ridiculous, I notice you didn't bother mentioning how cheap the Vision Pro is next to a house?

[readyplayernull]

One word: 2-hours-battery

[andsoitis]

Why do you think 2 hours battery life for this form factor is a debilitating constraint?

[readyplayernull]

It won't be a casual device that you want to put on/off to check the news while saving battery, so it's not a contender for the smartphone. Two hours is not enough for daily work, so it won't replace the computer. Meaning this is a routine device that you use once or twice per day then forget about it.

[FractalHQ]

I use my laptop everyday and leave it connected to power. Battery power is nice but rarely used.

[creativenolo]

Can’t you plug in it? My Windows laptop gives me about 45 mins tops. My Quest is never charged when I go to use it. It only gets charged when I use it.

[pavlov]

When the iPhone App Store launched there was an app called “I Am Rich” which was a picture of a ruby that cost $999. It sold many copies.

Sadly I bet Apple won’t allow it this time around.

[dag11]

> many copies

Specifically 8 copies -- which I absolutely agree counts as "many copies" for what it was!

[frereubu]

Two of which were refunded... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich#Purchases

[zakki]

Maybe they’ll allow it if it is an immersion app.

*I’m thinking of a comic that picturing Donald Duck’s uncle swimming in a pool of gold coins

[filoleg]

> But what makes it worth the effort to learn a new SDK, or even buy a MacOs device to develop for it, for just a few thousands of devices?

It is the same type of a bet when deciding to start a tire company or a car mechanic shop shortly after the first cars ever were introduced on the roads. You don't bet on the exisitng base, you bet on that base expanding extremely wildly, and you want to secure your position early.

Also, I fully expect to be positively surprised by the sales of VisionPro. Keep in mind, we live in a world where one of the fairly popular flagship android phones (Galaxy Fold) sells retail for close to $2k. And it is still fundamentally a smartphone, it just folds and has a couple nice features due to it that others don't. But none of it is practically groundbreaking. I would be honestly even more surprised, if Apple wouldn't manage to bring a sub-$2k version of their AR device in the following few years.

[ramesh31]

>It is the same type of a bet when deciding to start a tire company or a car mechanic shop shortly after the first cars ever were introduced on the roads. You don't bet on the exisitng base, you bet on that base expanding extremely wildly, and you want to secure your position early.

A lot of people (and billions of VC) made that bet in 2016 with the first wave of headsets. It didn't pan out, and they got burned (myself included).

Here's hoping Apple is in this for the long haul, as they are basically the last hope for consumer VR reaching mainstream adoption.

[cubefox]

Hardly the last hope. So far the only successful headset is the Oculus Quest and it was made by Meta, not Apple. It had multiple new features: internal processor, inside-out tracking, camera passthrough, very low price. The Quest headsets have sold 20 million units. In terms of features, the Vision is basically an ultra expensive premium Quest, combined with a heavier software focus on AR and finger tracking instead of controllers.

It is clear that Meta tries to conquer the market from the low price end, which seems to work, as there hasn't been an expensive headset (like the Valve Index) which sold anywhere as many units as the Quest. Now Apple doubles down on the high price end route. It will be interesting to see which price approach proves successful in the long run, or whether they both converge at some sort of compromise. I wouldn't say Apple's approach has an obvious advantage.

[ramesh31]

>The Quest headsets have sold 20 million units

This is kind of my point though. Over a hundred billion dollars invested by Facebook to sell 20 million units over 5 years (all at or below hardware cost). That's still a tiny drop in the bucket compared to mainstream adoption in the sense of iPhones and iPads. You could add up every headset ever sold by any company since Oculus 1 released in 2016, and it would still be less than the number of iPhones sold last year alone, both in units and revenue.

We are still waiting to see whether it will happen for VR. Apple just announced the first true second gen headset, so hopefully that does the trick.

[refulgentis]

I hope I live to be old enough that things sold to millions can succeed with their own story, instead of being subjected to eternal comparison to the iPhone story

It launched my career, but it’s such a poor comparison point for success. The iPhone replaced existing phones, it wasn’t a de novo market, or even technology really.

I didn’t review your FB #s carefully, but my guess is it performs some sort of coarse operation to guesstimate incremental employee cost due to VR

[ramesh31]

>I hope I live to be old enough that things sold to millions can succeed with their own story, instead of being subjected to eternal comparison to the iPhone story

VR has absolutely "succeeded" in the sense that it's a neat toy to play games with that we didn't have before. But for it to be anything more than that, yes the iPhone analogy is apt. Otherwise it remains a niche PC gaming peripheral, and nothing more (i.e. where we've been stuck for the last 5 years).

[vel0city]

Oculus Quest wasn't the first commercial HMD with inside-out tracking.

Windows Mixed Reality headsets came out October 2018 with inside-out tracking. Oculus Quest came out May 2019.

The Vive technically could do camera passthrough, but I never saw anything actually supporting it well and it wasn't very high quality at all. The Vive Pro which also released before the Quest even had two cameras for stereoscopic passthrough.

[LordDragonfang]

>The Quest headsets have sold 20 million units.

For comparison to another gaming device, that's more than the Xbox Series X and Series S (which both came out around the same time) combined, and over half of the PS5 sales numbers. These are well-established products with loyal fanbases.

[rafark]

This is Apple though. It is very likely that this will be a successful product. How many windows mobile/Symbian devs were burned before the iPhone came out?

If you can, you should totally give it a shot.

[Turskarama]

An interesting comparison, given how few people actually buy the fold despite the fact that it fully replaces any other phone you might have.

If the Vision Pro replaces the phone in your pocket then maybe it's worth the price. Have fun putting it on in the coffee shop to take a call.

[m3kw9]

You mean 10 million devices that’s the estimate Apple puts. This isn’t Play date or go fund me project

[makeitdouble]

Apple's marketing department telling us they'll be selling a lot if of little help to be honest.

[andsoitis]

> Apple's marketing department telling us they'll be selling a lot if of little help to be honest.

Since it requires manufacturing scale (these things aren't going to be hand-built by a blacksmith in Germany) I would bet it isn't merely marketing smoke & mirrors.

[makeitdouble]

Rumors set the numbers at less than 200,000 per quarter, and that's the maker running full capacity, which at this point is pretty optimistic.

https://www.thelec.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=4559

[m3kw9]

Lmao, and your estimate is gonna.. hurt it? I think they sell At least 5 mil. 7 or less is a 1st gen failure but they will have a 2nd gen that should fix the issues. AR is the future

[grouchomarx]

They said the same thing verbatim about iOS

[makeitdouble]

Would you apply the same logic to tvOS as well ?

[andsoitis]

Apple TVs running tvOS don't present a meaningfully better product offering than either Amazon FireSticks or Google Chromecasts, both of which sell at roughly an order of magnitude cheaper. Moreover, TV devices are neither positioned nor optimized for general computing.

[makeitdouble]

The Vision Pro sells at an order of magnitude more expensive than most AR/VR devices and we don't know yet if the product will be meaningfully better than the offering in 2024 when it's supposed to be released (a full year is a pretty long time in the computing field, IMHO)

VR devices are also not optimized for general computing (as a sign of it, the Vision Pro won't natively support mac apps either)

[sandoze]

This is a great question that will likely be subsidized by their development community. The smart move here is making the SDK available, hopefully hardware for development in the near future, and (most importantly) a market place available on day one for consumers.

We can never predict the future and can safely assume this will never have the reach of their phones, tablets, or computer market. But it is tempting to play the App Store lottery before the clones roll in!

[code_runner]

I’m personally really torn on this. I don’t think the user base will reduce though… especially if people spent that sort of money.

[XorNot]

If you can afford it, you can also afford to let it sit on the shelf gathering dust though.

Which is what my Vive does these days.