[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).

[cubefox]

The Quest is perhaps a gaming console, but it is very much not a PC peripheral.

[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.