The $3499 Apple Vision Pro reportedly costs $1542 to make.
Edit: Archive link https://archive.ph/u4BCi
because it is apple?
Here’s why Apple users are delusional.
The thing is essentially a public dev kit. If you aren’t stupid rich and you can’t write it off on your taxes for business, it’s not worth picking up yet. And Apple knows that.
Give the tech time to mature. There were people who talked shit about the iPhone when it came out, and now we ALL use smartphones. I genuinely think AR (in a different form factor) will be a big deal. Possibly the thing to unseat smartphones, if manufacturers can start nailing transparent screens. But admittedly there are a few leaps in technology that will need to happen first.
I think you’re attributing more grandeur to Apple’s decisions than is warranted.
Apple’s iPhone was not the first phone to use a touchscreen - that goes to IBM in the 90s. Apple did produce a PDA the same year with a touchscreen, though it used a stylus-based touchscreen. During that time touch tech was still developing. If you follow the overall evolution of touchscreens, Apple actually deployed its touchscreen phone about as early as they could - probably because every other company was also eyeing making one but were waiting until touchscreens were cheaper and more reliable.
It also was not the first smartphone. Again, that IBM phone with a touch screen also had e-mail capability, a calendar, and various other features, and phones being able to access the web and play games along with various PDA functions was almost standard as we got into the 2000s.
The touchscreen rectangle smartphone was already on the way - Apple just grabbed the bag first.
What Apple consistently does is act brashly by deploying a usually obvious future product before the tech is actually developed enough to fully support it. They then sell it at a stupidly high price which trims off who buys to mostly just futurists with rose-tinted glasses on. It’s a very effective strategy to get credit for innovation and leading the future while avoiding bad PR, and it fools massive amounts of people.
Apple is a company that is insanely good at corporate strategy. In fact, if there’s anything that Apple has truly pioneered, it’s the modern predatory, anti-repair, designed obsolescence fashion-tech environment we currently see.
I’m still talking shit about the iPhone. Where else do you see people using a glass keyboard? I don’t care if a billion idiots like it. There is virtually no choice in the market, everything boils down to the lowest common denominator. We need open and reusable technology, not this proprietary throwaway shit that you can’t maintain.
As somebody with big sweaty clumsy fingers, I actually liked mobile phones and software for them (J2ME) before touchscreens.
Those keyboards were hard to use, but understandably so due to size.
But why did they replace them with something even harder to use, even when at home sitting in a chair, I can’t fathom.
I think the best mobile device I’ve seen is PSP Slim, if we imagine a similar phone, buttons on the right could probably be replaced with a phone-like numpad fit for text input, the arrows and the joystick were perfect.
I had smartphones way before the iPhone but ok…
your reply is n=1, when op is clearly talking about mass adoption
Nokia s60 were mass adopted. Blackberrys were as well
Just because it costs this to manufacture and develop does not mean it is worth this to a consumer in terms of customer value.
This is especially true right now, when the enormous gulf between the wealthy and poor is the worst we’ve seen in living memory.
People are struggling to pay their rent, and yet Apple is over here selling this bullshit to people.
bill of materials” for the headset at $1,542, and that doesn’t include the costs of research and development, packaging, marketing or Apple’s profit margin.
Please read it, it’s just another version of the “the iPhone cost 500$ to make”. Research and especially marketing can sometimes be as much as the material and assembly cost. Id be surprised that apple doesn’t make a profit on it, but it might not be close at all to 100% .
It quite clearly seems to be some kind of public beta test product and enough rich people seem to be happy to pay for being the test hamsters.
I really love that you said test hamster instead of guinea pig.
I’m using this from now on.
I don’t like how hard the article tries to make it seem like the markup is justified because of all of Apple’s other costs. Apple will sell the product at whatever price it thinks the customer will pay, and the margins only matter to determine whether the product is worth it for Apple to sell (I’d love to see what the payback period is on the project though). The cost isn’t that outrageous if this COGS is correct, maybe slightly on the higher side for a tech product.
The real discussion should be whether the product is worth the price they are charging based on the utility and the cost of being essentially a beta tester as an owner of a 1st gen product.
Because Apple
$1000 monitor stand
$80 to undo what you did to slow down my phone.
What did they do? Prevent it from randomly shutting down? Because I’ll take a slower phone or a random hard shutdown any day of the week.
Was it wrong? Yes. But what else does any handset manufacturer do?
It’s useless, folks here will never believe that other devices do the same thing. I think they’d rather just have their device shut down at 25%.
On my original battery five years into having this iphone and it’s still screaming fast…
Agreed. Love how the Reddit act of downvoting has transferred to Lemmy /s
Here it’s just “someone enjoys iOS?! NOT ON MY WATCH”
I’ve got three Linux machines, six? Maybe seven? Windows machines, and I love the shit outta my iPhone. I was a first-adopter of Android with the Dream and loved it. But when I realized iPhones can last for 5-6 years with full updates AND STILL BE FAST with no effort, reformatting, or thinking about them… that’s all I want from a phone.
That and the privacy is better. It’s not perfect, but it’s lightyears better than ANYTHING google.
But on Lemmy, that makes me a baby toddler noob that knows nothing about computers, because if I just got this google device and did all of these mods to it and installed all this software and maintained it and BRAINED HARDER I could have a similar experience to my five year old iPhone
The tech inside is great, but Apple also knows its customers are happy to pay a hefty premium over cost. I hate Apple but they are amazing at branding at end of day.
Yeah there’s no way it doesn’t cost an absolute fortune to make a Vision Pro. The display is nuts, and if reports are to be believed, extremely difficult to make and with a very low yield. Then there’s a bunch of other high tech stuff in there.
It’s pretty much a polished prototype for Apple to simultaneously explore possible design avenues in the VR space, gather data on and overcome unforeseen obstacles in new VR tech and its development process, and get the ball rolling on VR software development on the Apple side.
The one perplexing thing is that right now VR has two main usecases: gaming and wanking. Apple takes a dim view of both. I think that’s something they’ll have to re-evaluate as they work to bring out more consumer-focused, sub $1k VR devices.
This isn’t a VR headset though…
They can call it whatever they want, but as far as I’m concerned a VR headset with very good video passthrough is still a VR headset.
Would you call Google glass or hololense a VR machine? No you wouldn’t. Apple fits right in there with them
Glass were glasses with a small HUD.
Vision Pro are goggles with a full opaque display and video passthrough. Like an Oculus/Meta device. Just higher quality passthrough.
It’s a VR headset, despite how much apple insists on it actually being a “spacial computer”, and some people saying it’s an AR device.
Yeah if you watch the iFixit tear down it’s obvious these things are just packed to the gills with tech. I’m not mega surprised they ended up costing so much. It’s really bleeding edge.
That said it’s way too expensive for me to get on board and I think they made some poor choices. Especially the outer display. The amount of weight, battery drain, fragility, and (presumably) expense that display alone added is just plain dumb. And it looks a lot worse IRL than in their videos.
I also think the aluminum looks great but I wonder how much lighter the headset would be if it were plastic without the outer display and glass.
Wearing a display on your head just seems like an awful experience to me. I always wondered as a kid what my “old people just don’t get tech” thing would be and I think this is definitely over that line. I just got no desire for this shit. It’s frustrating to see people chase it cause I know I’m going to have to deal with it eventually if they do.
Totally disagree with you. VR even in its currently pretty early stages is an absolute blast. Some of the most fun I’ve had gaming any time recently has been on a Quest 2. And I grew up on 8 and 16 bit consoles so I’ve been through the gamut of gaming experiences.
When the technology does another 5-10 years of advancing it’s going to be absolutely huge.
And to your point about old people not getting tech, my grandmother and mom both love VR and play games and do workouts on Quest together. They actually use them more than I do.
For wanking; it still has Safari, and Pornhub still exists 👍🏽
Good luck streaming a 30 to 60gb video.
It works great with my DLNA server and can play in stereoscopic 3D with the moon viewer app
Unrelated. I was referring to the fact that PornHub only has very short and/or very low res video available for vr.
“Because some dipshits will buy anything to be better than others, and also some people have just fucktons more money than they probably should “ - there, saved you a click
Apple financial statement for 2019, page 17.
The reason: Apple.
Unjerk for a moment. How much should something like this cost? Serious question. Seems like it can do things other devices really can’t. Saw a video yesterday from a programmer who said it could replicate an impossible physical setup. I don’t have a need for it but maybe someone else can see the value.
The Quest 3 is capable of the same stuff and is only $500.
I have both and the Quest 3 is definitely not capable of the same stuff.
Kevin Sorbo and Kevin Costner are capable of the same stuff too but there is a clear difference in performance and value.
I get the point but you could have picked at least one good actor instead of two mediocre ones. Sorbo vs Spacy. Big difference in both acting ability and how shitty they are as people.
I get your point too. Kevin Sorbo was the name that came to my head first, for some reason, and Kevin Costner followed. TBF though, Kevin Costner has won 2 Academy Awards, one for Best Director (Dances with Wolves in 1991) and has been nominated for a best actor award. He does have a long list of industry accomplishments in various roles. Kevin Sorbo doesn’t have anything close to that. I’m not a big fan of Kevin Costner but objectively speaking he is accomplished in his career.
Kevin Spacey wouldn’t have been better though, with his rapey background and all that, wouldn’t feel right putting him forward as something to aspire to.
Maybe Kevin Sorbo and Kevin Kline would have been a better comparison.
Every single reviewer is saying that the quality of the VR and specially the AR blows any competition out of the water. I highly doubt your comment is true.
The quality is better but it still does “the same stuff”. A PC with a 1080p display and Nvidia 3050 does the same stuff as a 4k display and an Nvidia 4080.
