The Apple Vision Pro’s eBay prices are making me sad
The Apple Vision Pro’s eBay prices are making me sad
www.theverge.com The Apple Vision Pro’s eBay prices are making me sad
Thankfully, in the headset nobody can see my tears.
56 comments
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I paid a lot of money for the privilege of getting an Apple Vision Pro brand-new in February. All-in, with optical inserts and taxes, I financed a little over $3,900 for the 256GB version of the headset.
Financing something like this. Holy fuck this person is an absolute moron.
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That’s not a smart choice to finance. First release is almost always overpriced and going to rapidly devalue. There’s a ton of R&D overhead to cover with initial launch of a new product line. The next iteration will be less expensive, or at least have multiple models with tiered pricing.
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Eh, Apple offers essentially zero cost financing.
If you actually have the cash and budget for this, it’s better to invest that $4k.
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Why? I financed an AVP too and use it extensively for my business. Maybe they’re doing the same? Especially with the Apple Card, it’s 0% interest. Why wouldn’t you do that instead of paying for the whole thing outright? Anyone who paid for the whole thing outright seems like a moron to me.
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$2500-3500-ish, versus $3500-5k new. Steeper discounts on fully optioned models.
Saved you a click. Looks to me like deprecation is not all that dissimilar to that of optioned out Macbooks.
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Aren't these things tied to an Apple ID with personalised setup? Can you even factory reset these things and walk into the Apple store to get it set up again?
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Hopefully, of the many things Apple learns from the Vision Pro Gen 1 is that building a massively over-engineered Rolls Royce MR face-computer is that they’ve finally hit a wall with both their bonkers product pricing scheme and their magical thinking about their internal product visions always seamlessly translating to widespread consumer reality. I mean, especially on the latter point, they’ve been falling flat for a few years, but mostly with smaller products and services, but now it’s happened with the launch of a major new product class— and it has failed spectacularly.
Don’t get me wrong: the Vision Pro is revolutionary wrt what it can become, but Apple released a product that was way too fucking expensive and which didn’t have the ecosystem of support functions to make it clear to everyone even what it’s for. It’s not an MR/AR/VR headset. It’s a FACE-COMPUTER which operates in MR only, and very few people can really wrap their heads around using a computer only that way, especially since even Apple hasn’t made it work that way very well or even made a case for why it should (outside of extreme edge cases)— yet.
This is future tech for a future when we’re ready for and need it. Right now, people just want an MR peripheral, not a whole ass FaceMac. And - for goddamn sure - nobody wants to pay for one.
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Man, you’re spot on with that last phrase, at least, for me. All I want is a MR headset comfortable enough to wear all day, and to be able to manage virtual windows and/or monitors comfortably in front of me. The rest I genuinely don’t care about. I dream of the day I can replace my big monitor (or multi-monitor setup) with a lightweight pair of fancy goggles that would give me all the monitor real estate I would ever want.
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Generally speaking, Apple’s very good about “hitting the now” with new tech, but they really missed the mark with this one. This tech is just too far ahead of its time. This is a real General Magic moment.
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Meanwhile at Apple:
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Exactly. Not only is it too expensive, but it doesn't have a "universal" killer app or use case. What I mean by that is something a lot of people could use it for.
There are quite a few use cases for the device, but many of them are edge cases. For example I think the Keynote (Apple's PowerPoint) virtual presentation mode is a great way to practice a presentation (you stand in a large room with the presentation behind you on a canvas and an audience in front of you), but how often are most people going to need it?
I personally loved the F1 demo one guy made with a 3D track map with the option to glimpse at onboards an whatnot. But how large of an audience would that have outside of hardcore F1 fans? Still, immersive live sports would probably be a thing, but without a large user base the broadcasters won't bother making an elaborate (and costly) stream with added features exclusive to Vision Pro.
I'm not sure if Apple can fix this by "simply" releasing a second generation model, even if it somehow came at just half the price.
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I can think of 100 use cases just for me. Maybe 500.More for other specialists in other industries. What I can’t do - even as a UX designer - is even imagine 100,000 use cases, which I can for… a phone or an iPod or and iPad. More even.
And Apple hasn’t engineered this device for those use cases. If they had, and marketed this device as such, we would be having a very different conversation.
But they didn’t.
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You’re factually wrong about several things in what you wrote but, more generally, I think you’re very wrong on what it is, what it can become, and why it should exist. You can’t say that it’s failed spectacularly unless you know what the goals and targets were so I think it’s silly to even try to make that point, much less without anything to support that kind of assertion.
Even the absolutes in which you speak are wrong. I paid for one and am happy I did. I plan to buy more of them as our usage expands and it will pay for itself before the end of the quarter. If it gets better than this with successive versions, that could be considered a major success. I think everyone can agree it’s a niche product right now but to say that nobody wants to pay for one and that it has failed is just nonsensical.
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Strange— you say I’m wrong, yet you don’t say how or about what, nor do you offer explanation or evidence. Also, I never said it “failed” nor that it was a “failure”, but at least you acknowledge I said that it’s a niche product (which sorta contradicts the “failure” claim, doesn’t it?)
I’m glad you like yours, and I also look forward to future iterations.
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"These comments remind me of the folks who thought the original iPod didn't stand a chance..."
Just going to leave this here:
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I owned an original iPhone and saw its immediate potential as a revolutionary device. That thing got me laid more than once.
This is different.
Look, I see what this could become, but Apple hadn’t thought through some important parts of creating an entirely new computing UX. And the device’s expense and design are serious problems that devices like the iPhone didn’t have to overcome.
Everyone immediately knew how to use and integrate the iPhone into their lives, despite some very vocal critics and some valid complaints. The Vision Pro is a device that has no clear purpose, no “killer feature”, and whatever allure it may have is worn off by its outrageous and prohibitive price brought by the fact that’s it absurdly over-engineered.
As a result, it’s almost universally panned.
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Especially when 90% of the features etc can be done on a $200 quest 2 or a $600 quest 3.
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What a fuckin idiot
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Seems like it's still very overpriced.
56 comments