[distortedsignal]

My point is that there is more to "VR Headset Market" than just "low end" - low end is one part of the market, but (right now) Facebook has that part locked up.

It may be that there are more places to compete in the VR Headset Market that people on HN don't know about.

Like you said, this is probably something like an Android play. Everyone was talking about the Apple Vision Pro as the VR Market's "iPhone moment" when it came out - maybe Meta Vision OS (or whatever they're calling it) is Facebook's Android moment.

And yeah, Facebook would probably be ok with others taking the low end of the market if they do it well. Right now, Facebook is the only company willing to take a loss on their own platform. So they do.

[asrael_io]

Not really sure if the Vision Pro could be called the iPhone of VR. It's not nearly as popular and its demand has ground to a halt.

[Nevermark]

It is a wonderful indispensable device for a very special market.

Particular Mac users who happen to particularly like the physical and mental ergonomics, and locational and furniture freedom, of arrangeable virtual screens and a beautiful visual isolation chamber on demand.

(And in my case, who have dramatically customized the light shield and straps to be super comfortable for long periods.

I would buy the next version at twice the price if it came out tomorrow. And give up a lot to do it.

But that is a VERY niche market. There are only three of us happy campers, after the return wave. It is definitely not an iPhone - yet.

Personally, I think they should lean into it as a MacBook Pro killer. Make it a first class pro computing device. That is a good rationale for keeping around a high end spec, high priced version.

Then have Air versions when it becomes possible to ship a cheap enough iOS-computing level version for the masses.

[veidr]

I agree. I’m reading this (and now typing this reply) from the Vision Pro, while doing a 2-hour low-and-medium-intensity cardio workout on my elliptical trainer. Hard to overstate how much better this is than the old MBP/iPad plus big-screen TV setup I had.

I would also buy another AVP immediately, if I broke this, or if a better one came out,

But that is… extremely niche. The OS is as bad as iOS 1.0 was — but without the obvious utility to a huge number of people. I’m not sure Apple can pull this off.

But, I have all the Meta headsets, too, and have used them for this purpose. That gives me the perspective to understand that, while on one hand it is indeed “just another VR headset”, there has never been one actually usable for this before. Apple has the lead along a dew different axes. The question is, do they have the stomach to lose money on it for 10 years like Meta has>

(Even if they don’t literally sell it below cost, like Meta, it won’t work out if they don’t keep iterating as hard as they can on the software side. Like the first iPhone, it is simultaneously amazing, unprecedented, and objectively awful in many ways.)

P.S. I do easy work in here on the gym machines, too. Not just HN-reading. ;-)

[veidr]

BTW the key to getting work done in AVP while running on a machine (or any other active scenario, like housework or walking to the grocery store) is to enable some of the Accessibility features.

The normal dictation feature is so bad it is unusable for more than a sentence fragment. The one enabled via Accessibility is incredibly good, aside from a bit more latency than I’d like (but easy to get used to that), and enables mixed voice dictation and keyboard-typing, without switching modes.

[TheOtherHobbes]

And that's why Meta will fail. The company doesn't have the branding or the technical imagination to create either a mass-appeal or a high-end prestige product. Apple has both, and its best VR effort appeals to a few thousand people.

As long as VR is limited to facehuggers the market will remain niche. VR glasses are a good few years (decades?) off.

In the meantime Apple will eat the high end and probably some of the low end.

So where does that leave Meta?

It doesn't help that Meta is more of an annoyance than brand. I'm not sure anyone actually likes Meta or Meta's products. While they're tolerated to some extent, they're perceived as fundamentally boring or irritating in a way that is deadly for brands.